“On one occasion,” he writes, “while working my way toward the Eskimo huts, I saw a large _Usuk_ basking asleep upon the ice. Taking off my shoes, I commenced a somewhat refrigerating process of stalking, lying upon my belly and crawling along, step by step, behind the little knobs of floe. At last, when I was within long rifle-shot, the animal gave a sluggish roll to one side, and suddenly lifted his head. The movement was evidently independent of me, for he strained his neck in nearly the opposite direction. Then, for the first time, I found that I had a rival seal-hunter in a large bear, who was on his belly like myself, waiting with commendable patience and cold feet for a chance of nearer approach. ‘What should I do?—the bear was doubtless worth more to me than the seal; but the seal was now within shot, and the bear a bird in the bush! Besides, my bullet once invested in the seal would leave me defenceless. I might be giving a dinner to a bear, and saving myself for his dessert.’ These meditations were soon brought to a close; for a second movement of the seal so aroused my hunter’s instincts that I pulled the trigger. My cap alone exploded. Instantly with a floundering splash, the seal descended into the deep, and the bear, with three or four rapid leaps, stood disconsolately by the place of his descent. For a single moment we stared each other in the face, and then, with that discretion which is the better part of valor, the bear ran off in one direction, and I followed his example in the other.” [Sidenote: _DR. KANE’S JOURNEY_] Toward the end of April, Dr. Kane had completed his preparations for his grand sledge journey to the north. “It was,” he writes, “to be the crowning expedition of the campaign to attain the _ultima thule_ of the Greenland shore, measure the waste that lay between it and the unknown west, and seek round the furthest circle of the ice for an outlet to the mysterious channels beyond.” “The worst thought I have now in setting out,” writes Dr. Kane, April 26, “is that of the entire crew I can leave but two behind in able condition, and the doctor and Bonsall are the only two officers who can help Ohlsen. This is our force, four able-bodied and six disabled to keep the brig; the commander and seven men, scarcely better upon the average, out upon the ice. Eighteen souls, thank God! certainly not eighteen bodies! “I am going this time to follow the ice-belt (_Eis-fod_) to the Great Glacier of Humboldt, and there load up with pemmican from our cache of last October. From this point I expect to stretch along the face of the glacier inclining to the west of north, and make an attempt to cross the ice of the American side. Once on smooth ice, near this shore, I may pass to the west, and enter the large indentation whose existence I can infer with nearly positive certainty. In this I may find an outlet, and determine the state of things beyond the ice-clogged area of this bay.