one victim after another, snatching him by the nape of the neck, and flinging him many feet, or rather yards, by a barely perceptible movement of her head.

3. Tudla, our master dog, was already hors du combat; he had been tossed twice. Jenny, just as I emerged from the hatch, was making an extraordinary somerset of some eight fathoms, and alighted senseless. Old Whitey, staunch, but not bear-wise, had been the first in the battle; he was yelping in helplessness on the snow.

4. It seemed as if the controversy was adjourned; and nannook evidently thought so; for she turned off to our beef barrels, and began in the most unconcerned manner, to turn them over and nose out their fatness. She was apparently as devoid of fear as any of the bears in the stories of old Barentz and the Spitzbergen voyagers.

5. I lodged a pistol ball in the side of the cub. At once the mother placed her little one between her hind legs, and shoving it along, made her way behind the beef-house. Mr. Ohlsen wounded her as she went, with my Webster rifle; but she scarcely noticed it. She tore down, by single efforts of her forearms, the barrels of frozen beef which made the triple walls of the storehouse, mounted the rubbish, and, snatching up a half-barrel of herrings, carried it down by her teeth, and was making off. It was time to close, I thought. Going up within half pistol range, I gave her six buckshot. She dropped, but instantly rose, and getting her cub into its former position, moved off once more.

6. This time she would really have escaped but for the admirable tactics of our new recruits from the Esquimaux. The dogs of Smith's Sound are educated more thoroughly than any of their more southern brethren. Next to the walrus, the bear is the staple of diet to the north, and, except the fox, supplies the most important element of the wardrobe.

Unlike the dogs we had brought with us from Baffin's Bay, these were trained, not to attack, but to embarrass.

7. They ran in circles round the bear, and when pursued would keep ahead with regulated gait, their comrades effecting a diversion at the critical moment by a nip at her hind quarters. This was done so systematically and with so little seeming excitement, as to strike every one on board. I have seen bear-dogs elsewhere that had been drilled to relieve each other in the melee, and avoid the direct assault; but here, two dogs without even a demonstration of attack, would put themselves before the path of the animal, and, retreating right and left, lead him into a profitless pursuit that checked his advance completely.

8. The poor animal was still backing out, yet still fighting, · carrying along her wounded cub, embarrassed by the dogs, yet gaining distance from the brig, when Hans and myself threw in the odds in the shape of a couple of rifle balls. She staggered in front of her young one, faced us in death-like defiance, and only sank when pierced by six more bullets.

9. We found nine balls in skinning her body. She was of medium size, very lean, and without a particle of food in her stomach. Hunger must have caused her boldness. The net weight of the cleansed carcass was three hundred pounds; that of the entire animal six hundred and fifty; her length but seven feet eight inches.

10. Bears in this lean condition are much the most palatable food. The impregnation of fatty oil through the cellular tissue, makes a well-fed bear nearly uneatable. The flesh of a famished beast, although less nutritious as a fuel diet, is rather sweet and tender than otherwise.

11. The little cub is larger than the adjective implies. She was taller than a dog, and weighs one hundred and fourteen pounds. Like Morton's bear in Kennedy's Channel, she

sprang upon the corpse of her mother, and raised a woeful lamentation over her wounds. She repelled my efforts to noose her, with great ferocity; but, at last, completely muzzled, with a line fastened by a running knot between her jaws and the back of her head, she moved off to the brig amid the clamor of the dogs. We have her now chained alongside, but snarling and snapping constantly, evidently suffering from her wound.

On

XCIV. —WINTER.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

1. Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old;

open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek;
It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;
The little brook heard it and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof;

2. All night by the white stars' frosty gleams.
He groined his arches and matched his beams;
Slender and clear were his crystal spars

As the lashes of light that trim the stars;
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipped
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt,
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;

3. Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear,

For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops

And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one;

4. No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this winter-palace of ice;
'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day,
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,
Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry
By the elfin builders of the frost.

5. Within the hall are song and laughter;
The cheeks of Christmas grow red and jolly;
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter

With lightsome green of ivy and holly;
Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide;

6. The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap,

Hunted to death in its galleries blind; And swift little troops of silent sparks,

Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear,

Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks
Like herds of startled deer.

7. But the wind without was eager and sharp, Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, And rattles and wrings

The icy strings,

Singing, in dreary monotone,

A Christmas carol of its own,

Whose burden still, as he might guess,
Was "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!"

XCV.-SUMMER.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

1. And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;

Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;

2. The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace;

The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,

And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives;