"The dogs sprang towards her at once; but the cub jumped upon her body and reared up, for the first time growling hoarsely. They seemed quite afraid of the little creature, she fought so actively, and made so much noise; and, while tearing mouthfuls of hair from the dead mother, they would spring aside the minute the cub turned towards them. The men drove the dogs off for a time, but were obliged to shoot the cub at last, as she would not quit the body. "Hans fired into her head. It did not reach the brain, though it knocked her down; but she was still able to climb on her mother's body, and try to defend it, her mouth bleeding like a gutter-spout. They were obliged to despatch her with stones." After skinning the old one they gashed its body, and the dogs fed upon it ravenously. The little one they _cached_ for themselves against their return. This little fight quite knocked up Hans the Esquimaux; Morton therefore advanced alone, in the hope of being able to get beyond a huge cape that lay before him. On reaching it, the grand sight of an _apparently boundless ocean of open water_ met his eye. Only "four or five small pieces" of ice were seen on the glancing waves of this hitherto unknown sea. "Viewed from the cliffs," writes Dr Kane, "and taking thirty-six miles as the mean radius open to reliable survey, this sea had a justly-estimated extent of more than 4000 square miles." Here, then, in all probability, is the great Arctic Ocean that has been supposed to exist in a perpetually fluid state round the pole, encircled by a ring of ice that has hitherto presented an impenetrable barrier to all the adventurers of ancient and modern times. There were several facts connected with this discovery that go far to prove that this ocean is perpetually open. Further south, where Dr Kane's brig lay in ice that seemed never to melt, there were few signs of animal life--only a seal or two now and then; but here, on the margin of this far northern sea, were myriads of water-fowl of various kinds. "The Brent goose," writes the Doctor, "had not been seen before since entering Smith's Strait. It is well known to the polar traveller as a migratory bird of the American continent. Like the others of the same family, it feeds upon vegetable matter, generally on marine plants, with their adherent molluscan life. It is rarely or never seen in the interior; and from its habits may be regarded as singularly indicative of open water. The flocks of this bird, easily distinguished by their wedge-shaped line of flight, now crossed the water obliquely, and disappeared over the land to the north-east.