Captain Ommaney and the Polar Bear.
Captain Ommaney,[41] who led one of the travelling parties in 1851 sent out from the ships under Austin in search of Franklin on the 12th of June, the day before he arrived at the ships, met with a laughable accident, although it might have had a serious termination. They had all of them but just got into their blanket bags, when a peculiar noise, as if something was rubbing up the snow, was heard outside. The gallant captain instantly divined its cause, seized, loaded, and cocked his gun, and ordered the tent door to be opened, upon which a huge bear was seen outside. Captain Ommaney fired at the animal, but, whether from the benumbed state of his limbs, or the dim glimmering light, he unfortunately missed him, and shot away the rope that supported the tent instead. The enraged monster then poked his head against the poles, and the tent fell upon its terrified inmates, and embraced them in its folds. Their confusion and dismay can more easily be imagined than described, but at length one man, with more self-possession than the rest, slipped out of his bag, scrambled from under the prostrate tent, and ran to the sledge for another gun; and it was well that he did so, for no sooner had he vacated his sleeping sack than Bruin seized it between his teeth, and shook it violently, with the evident intention of wreaking his vengeance on its inmate. He was, however, speedily despatched by a well-aimed shot from the man, the tent was repitched, and tranquillity restored.
RACCOON.
A strikingly pretty, well-clad, and pleasingly coloured North American quadruped, of which many zoological anecdotes might be given. Linnæus named it Ursu lotor, or the Washer, from its curious habit of putting any food offered to it, at least when in confinement, into water, before attempting to eat it.
"A Gone Coon."
An American phrase for "the last extremity," or, "it's all up." They say that a Major, or Colonel, or General Scott "down South" was notorious as a dead shot. Once on a time, when out with his gun, he espied a raccoon on a lofty tree. The poor raccoon, noticing the gun pointed at him, cried to the dead shot, "Air you General Scott?"—"I air."—"Then wait, I air a comin' down, for I air a gone coon."
BADGER.
The badger, or brock, as it is called in Scotland, is yearly becoming more and more rare. In a few years, this curious and powerful member of the feræ, will figure, like the bear and beaver, as among the extinct quadrupeds of these islands. Naturalists will be recording that in the days of Robert Burns it must have been not at all uncommon, and not rare in those of Hugh Miller, since low dram-shops kept them for the entertainment of their guests. The Ayrshire bard makes the Newfoundland dog, Cæsar, say to his comrade Luath, the collie, when, speaking of most of the gentry of his day—
"They gang as saucy by poor folk
As I wad by a stinking brock."[42]
The author of "Old Red Sandstone" and "My Schools and Schoolmasters," has recorded in the latter work the history of his employment as a hewer of great stones under the branching foliage of the elm and chestnut trees of Niddry Park, near Edinburgh, and how, in the course of a strike among the masons, he marched into town with several of them to a meeting on the Links, where, conspicuous from the deep red hue of their clothes and aprons, they were cheered as a reinforcement from a distance. On adjourning, Hugh Miller, in his racy style, gives the following account of a badger-baiting more than forty years ago:—