Bears drifting about at a considerable distance from the land are often enough seen by the whalers. They have been discovered fully sixty miles from shore, in Davis Strait, without any ice in sight, and utterly exhausted by long swimming. It is thus that Nature checks their too rapid increase; for beyond the possibility of the wolf hunting it in packs and destroying the cubs, there seems no other limitation of their numbers. The Eskimos are too few, and too badly provided with weapons, to slaughter them very extensively. Wherever seals abound, so do bears; in Barrow Strait and in the Queen’s Channel they have been seen in very numerous troops. The Danes assert that they are plentiful about the northern settlement of Upernavik in Greenland, for nine months in the year; and from the united testimony of the natives inhabiting the north-eastern portion of Baffin Bay, and that of Dr. Kane, who wintered in Smith Sound, it is evident that they are plentiful about the _polynias_, or open pools, formed there by the action of the tides. In the summer months, when the bear is loaded with fat, it is easily hunted down, for then it can neither move swiftly nor run long; but in deep winter its voracity and its great strength render it a formidable enemy to uncivilized and unarmed man. Usually it avoids coming into contact with our British seamen, though instances are on record of fiercely contested engagements, in which Bruin has with difficulty been defeated. It is folly, says Sherard Osborn, to talk of the Polar bear hibernating: whatever bears may do on the American continent, there is only one Arctic navigator who ever saw a bear’s nest! Bears were seen at all points visited by our sailors in the course of M’Clure’s expedition; at all times and in all temperatures; males or females, and sometimes females with their cubs. In mid-winter, as well as in midsummer, they evidently frequented spots where tides or currents occasioned either water to constantly exist, or only allowed such a thin coating of ice to form that the seal or walrus could easily break through.