Читать книгу The White Czar. A Story of a Polar Bear онлайн

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Omingmong usually goes in herds of from twenty to fifty head, although smaller herds are often encountered. So if the Eskimo sights the coveted prize he usually finds more than one.

How this strange animal subsists in this frozen snow-covered barren land is one of the mysteries of nature. After allowing him all the creeping willow and saxifrage and dried grass that he can paw out from under the snow, yet it is strange how he keeps in good flesh where any other cloven-hoofed animal would starve. Mother Nature has given him the secret and he guards it well.

Promptly on the following day, although there was little to indicate where one day began and another left off, Eiseeyou and his party dug out of their snowbank, ate some raw meat themselves, fed the dog teams their frozen fish, and were off, much refreshed by their night's sleep in the snowbank with the thermometer from thirty to forty degrees below zero.

They travelled as they had the day before, Eiseeyou going ahead and the other teams following his lead. Every half mile or so they stopped to reconnoiter, for they were now approaching the land of Omingmong and must go cautiously. For six weary hours they scoured the country, Eiseeyou making several detours to explore likely musk ox feeding ground.