THE BIG GAME OF THE - ARCTIC SEAS.* WHEN Mr.
E. M. Scull writes of hunting in the Arctic he means what Americans call bunting and we call shooting. He has told hie story well, for a narrative about big-game shooting and adventure carries its own passport to the hearts of many readers so long as the author's method is clear and practical. The last point is very important. Mere writing has to be extraordinarily well done to recommend itself if the author disdain, to tell us plain details. The secret is to begin at the beginning, tell everything that the reader cannot fairly be assumed to know, and write such a book that any sportsman would be able to use it as a handbook if he wanted to fit out a similar expedition. Mr. Scull has not failed in this respect. He describes the schooner in which he and his friends sailed, and is precise as to the food and kit, arms and ammunition. The big game which the sportsmen specially wished to shoot was the polar bear. But they did not leave walrus out of their reckoning, and, as the Pacific walrus is larger than the Atlantic walrus and has better tusks, they decided to aim for the waters north of Eastern Siberia. One disadvantage from the point of view of the sportsmen was that they were unable to charter a vessel for their exclusive purpose. The owner of the schooner joined the expedition to take cinematograph pictures, and also to pursue nondescript trading, which did not always lie in quite the same direction as bear and walrus. We do not know how the cinematograph business prospered, but some of the photographs taken by another member of the party which are reproduced in the book are excellent. The photograph of a bear rising out of the sea to look at the schooner• is delightful. The schooner was three-masted, was of HS tons, and had an auxiliary motor. As she drew only seven feet of water and had a fiat bottom, she made much leeway. It seems that against a strong wind she could not make any headway even with the help of the motor. We are not surprised when we consider her build and look at the photographs of her high deckhouse, which must have held an enormous amount of wind. At least once the vessel was in much danger of being blown on to a lee shore; but we shall come to that presently.
The author before joining the schooner crossed the White Pass to the head of the Yukon River•, visited Dawson and the Klondike goldfields, and then reached the coast of Alaska by river. The once dreaded White Pass is now traversed by a railway on which travelling is comfortable. Mr. Scull saw a dory run some of the rapids in the Yukon
"Dr. Sugden, an old-time river pilot, sent a dory by rail up to the head of Miles Canyon, and a large crowd walked out to the Rapids to see him come out of the gorge and go through the swift water. Merl Is Voy set up a motion-picture camera. After a long wait the boat shot out of the canyon into the rapids. The pilot steered with an oar at the stern and kept bow down-stream, choosing the round back of water where the current ran swiftest and deepest. Though the angry wave-crests seemed from our point of view to be curling frequently into the open dory, the boat came through with very little water aboard. We ventured the opinion that a strong swimmer might go through the White Horse Rapids. 'No one has ever succeeded,' replied Dr. Sugden. 'Every time that a boat capsized, or a man fell out and lost hold of the craft, death followed. The current probably draws down- ward in places. I once saw a large spruce tree, about seventy feet long, come through. At one place it was whirled up on end, drawn down straight out of sight and cast out below the rapids, broken into three pieces:" For shooting in Eastern Siberia it was necessary to obtain leave from a Russian Baron who administered the district. He was an elusive person, but eventually leave was obtained. By bartering with the amiable natives—the Chukchi—the sportsmen added many useful articles to their equipment. But the expedition nearly came to an untimely end. The schooner was caught in a storm in the Behring Strait, and was driven helplessly to leeward. The strait is about fifty miles across, but in the middle are the Diomede Islands, against the sheer sides of which the sea in most places bursts furiously. The schooner drove past the islands in safety, but did not miss them by much. Fog added to the " jumpiness " of the adventure, as it was impossible to say where the schooner
• Hunting in the Arctic and Alaska. By E. Marshall Scull. With lid Illustrations from Photographs and 11 Maps. London Duckworth and Co: [12a. ed. net.)
was. When the storm died away the vessel was almost back at her starting-point ; but worse than that bad happened, for her rudder had carried away. A long beam trailing over- board, like an oar over the stern of a small boat, was used as a jury rudder. When the ship was put about several members of the party used to lie out on the beam in order to give it a better grip of the water. A pretty implement indeed to depend upon in the difficult and stormy waters off Alaska!
Fortunately at a harbour another redder was bought by sheer good luck and was fitted. At last Siberian waters and ice were reached, and at the very beginning of the ice the party had the good fortune to eight their first bear. This animal was killed by a shot from the ship ; but later the bears were stalked across the ice afterthe sportsmen had approached as near as possible in the small rickety skin canoes which are used by the natives. Sometimes a bear takes a turn at the stalking
:- "In spite of his great size and strength, for the polar bear is among the largest of his kind, he is not difficult to kill and usually takes to flight when wounded. When he sees a man on the ice, the bear will stalk him, frequently climbing hummocks to spy and sniff. He can thus generally be shot at close quarters. An unarmed man may frighten off a bear by loud cries or rapid move- ment of the arms, but if he runs the bear will pursue."
The tracking of bears is indeed hardly necessary, as the bear sees or scents a camp long before the human beings in it are aware of his presence. Hunger or curiosity nearly always compels him to come near it. In (march of food bears swim long distances, and they leave the laud many days' journey behind when they are roaming on the ice :—
"Cagni found a bear 120 miles from land and Nansen, during his long drift in the Fram' and his sledge journey, reported bears at great distances. Several were seen upwards of 100 miles from the islands of New Siberia, one 100 miles north of Spitsbergen, one 200 miles north-west of Franz Josef Laud, one 230 miles north-west of Franz Josef Land and 210 miles north of Spitsbergen. A solitary wanderer was found 270 miles north of Cape. Chelyuskin, the nearest land then known, but new islands were discovered in 1913 stretching northward from this point, which greatly reduce the actual distance of that bear from his home on solid ground. Nansen also saw fresh fox tracks 200 miles north-west of Frans Josef Land. A male and female, sometimes accompanied by one or two large cubs, make extended excursions together, but larger bar de are not of ten seen. Their principal food is seal and young walrus and it is thought that they also consume large quantities of seaweed, grass and lichens."
Mr. Scull studied the walruses besides shooting some, and gives a good description of a walrus rookery :— " But our chief attention was centred on the large gathering of animals crowded upon the ice pan to windward of sea. They were at least forty in number, for we counted that many that we could see, and were packed together to the very edge of the ice. Many, lucky enough to have arrived early and secured places in the middle of the floe, were forced to sit up by the pushing of later corners, and expressed their discontent by frequent grunts and ill-natured tusk jabs at their neighbours. Some hang to the edge of the dry ice by their fore-flippers, their bodies resting on the nnder-water shelf, awaiting a chance to force a way up on a newly vacated spot. Some bodies lay over the others, and when one, annoyed at being too insistently squeezed or lain upon, sat up and brandished his formidable teeth in the air, several more generally were inconvenienced enough to rear up too and argue out the point with him by voice and ivory. Their squabbles lasted only a minute, began with a couple of sharp pecks at the flank or shoulder of the offending animal, caused a sudden shift out of the way or a few clashes of tusks, and ended by both creatures falling back to sleep with a long sigh of resignation at the petty bothers in having to live with others. Larger tnskers seemed to be the tyrants of the rookery and the others often imitated their example ; in a small herd they even prepared to lie down again after a bullet had brained the loader and laid him motionless on the snow. Around the edges of the pan walrus were milling' all the time, rising to blow and sinking at once ; some rose high out of water looking fora vantage ground. on the ice. In their persistence they frequently went round the herd several times before giving it up to join the other disappointed fellows at a little distance. No attempt to picture the walrus herd would be faithful did it not attempt to show the uncanny impression which such a sky-line made upon the eye. Out of a tangled darkness of bodies, pro- jected here and there a vast bulk tapering to- a relativelz small head which, stretched upward in the same line, waved its two teeth aloft for a moment and then fell back again into the Apparently bears have a very wholesome respect for full- gr awn walruses, and generally leave them alone.
After a narrow escape of being frozen in by the rapidly accumulating ice at the end-of their cruise, the party returned in safety to Alaska. In the Kenai Peninsula, which lice south of the famous Mount McKinley, the author shot some moose and wild sheep on his way home, We cannot say more of this part of the book than that it also is clear and practical. On the whole, the author writes with a critical and detached air of his companions and of their squabbles. One is driven to reflect how intimately success in Arctic and Antarctic exploration depends upon the careful choosing of the party and upon complete unity of purpose.
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