Page:Narrative of the extraordinary adventures of four Russian sailors (1).pdf/11

 blue and white foxes. The flesh of these animals served them also for food and their skins for clothing, and other necessary preservatives against the intense coldness of a climate so near the pole.

They killed, however, only ten white bears in all, and that not without the utmost danger; for these animals, being prodigiously strong, defending; themselves with astonishing vigour and fury. The first our men attacked designedly; the other nine they slew in defending themselves from their assaults; for some of these creatures even ventured to enter the outer room of the hut, in order to devour them. It is true, that all the bears did not shew (if it may be allowed the expression) equal intrepidity; either owing to some being less pressed by hunger, or to their being by nature less carnivoronscarnivorous [sic] than the others; for some of them, which entered the hut, immediately betook themselves to flight on the first attempt of the sailors to drive them away. A repetition, however of these ferocious attacks, threw the poor men into great terror and anxiety, as they were in almost a perpetual danger of being devoured. The three different kinds of animals above-mentioned, viz. the rein deer, the blue and white foxes, and the white bears, were the only food these wretched mariners tasted