The weight of this bear, which was not of the largest size, was afterwards found to be above five hundred pounds, and her length was eight feet nine inches. The cub weighed upwards of a hundred pounds, and was larger than a Newfoundland dog. The operation of cutting out the entrails, preparatory to packing on the sledge, was now commenced by Meetuck, whose practised hand applied the knife with the skill, though not with the delicacy, of a surgeon. "She has been a hungry bear, it seems," remarked Fred, as he watched the progress of the work, "if we may judge from the emptiness of her stomach." "Och! but she's had a choice morsel, if it was a small wan," exclaimed O'Riley in surprise, as he picked up a plug of tobacco. On further examination being made, it was found that this bear had dined on raisins, tobacco, pork, and adhesive plaster! Such an extraordinary mixture of articles, of course, led the party to conclude that either she had helped herself to the stores of the _Dolphin_ placed on Store Island, or that she had fallen in with those of some other vessel. This subject afforded food for thought and conversation during the next hour or two, as they drove towards the ship along the ice-belt of the shore. The ice-belt referred to is a zone of ice which extends along the shore from the unknown regions of the North. To the south it breaks up in summer and disappears altogether, but in the latitude which our travellers had now reached, it was a permanent feature of the scenery all the year round, following the curvatures and indentations of bays and rivers, and increasing in winter or diminishing in summer, but never melting entirely away. The surface of this ice-belt was covered with immense masses of rock many tons in weight, which had fallen from the cliffs above. Pointing to one of these as they drove along, West remarked to Fred,-- "There is a mystery explained, sir. I have often wondered how huge, solitary stones, that no machinery of man's making could lift, have come to be placed on sandy shores where there were no other rocks of any kind within many miles of them. The ice must have done it, I see." "True, West. The ice, if it could speak, would explain many things that now seem to us mysterious; and yonder goes a big rock on a journey that may perhaps terminate at a thousand miles to the south of this." The rock referred to was a large mass that became detached from the cliffs and fell, as he spoke, with a tremendous crash upon the ice-belt, along which it rolled for fifty yards. There it would lie all winter, and in spring the mass of ice to which it was attached would probably break off and float away with it to the south, gradually melting until it allowed the rock to sink to the bottom of the sea, or depositing it, perchance, on some distant shore, where such rocks are not wont to lie--there to remain an object of speculation and wonderment to the unlearned of all future ages.