cut him up; but when his belly was being opened, he raised his head in a fury, seized the butt-end of my rifle with his teeth and tore it from my hand. My companions soon despatched him. The bear was eight feet long, and therefore of unusual size. We might have cut off two or three cwt. of flesh from his carcase, but in consideration of the heavy lading of the sledge, we contented ourselves with appropriating sixty pounds. Both Rawlinson and Austria Sounds were equally rich in fresh traces of bears, which seemed to be those of whole families and not of individual animals. 22. Our latitude from a meridian observation was found to be 81° 38′—and though the sun shining dimly through the clouds might account for an error of two or three minutes, we had certainly passed beyond the latitude 81° 35′ reached by Hayes in Smith’s Sound in 1861.[45] Having no conception at the time that Hall’s American expedition had penetrated, the year before we achieved this result, to 82° 9′ on the land and 82° 22′ at sea, we hoisted our sledge-flag to commemorate our success. The character of the ice now became so wild and confused that we wandered 45° from one point of the compass to the other. We constantly expected to come upon open fissures, and could not conceal from ourselves how easily its loose connection might be broken up by a storm, and our return to the ship exposed to great risks. The transport of our travelling gear became increasingly difficult, and great were our fears lest, through the constant heavy shocks which the sledge encountered, the case of spirit should be crushed and destroyed. The difficulties too to be overcome amid the multitude of hummocks were more depressing than the occurrence of snow-storms, inasmuch as their number almost destroyed the possibility of progress; and the monotonous uniformity which tired the eye tended also to depress the spirits.