RIBBON SEAL (Phoca fasciata) (see polar bear group, [page 438])
The broad-banded markings of the male ribbon seal render it the handsomest and most strongly characterized of the group of hair seals to which it belongs. Its size is about that of the harbor seal. Its range extends from the Aleutian Islands, on the coast of Alaska, and from the Kuriles, on the Asiatic shore of the Pacific, north to Bering Straits.
This seal is so scarce and its home is in such remote and little-frequented waters that its habits are almost unknown. Apparently it is even less gregarious than the harbor seal and usually occurs singly, although a few may be seen together, where individuals chance to meet. There are records of its capture at various places along the Asiatic coast, especially about Kamchatka and the shores of Okhotsk Sea. In Alaska it is a scarce visitant to the Aleutian Islands and appears to be most common on the coast south of the Yukon Delta and from Cape Nome to Bering Straits.
The few individuals taken by the Alaskan Eskimos are captured while they are hunting other seals on the pack ice in winter, and while at sea in kyaks in spring and fall. Owing to its attractive markings, the skin of the male ribbon seal is greatly prized by the Eskimos, as it was formerly by the fur traders, for use as clothes-bags. The skin is removed entire and then tanned, the only opening left being a long slit in the abdomen, which is provided with eyelet holes and a lacing string, thus making a convenient water-proof bag to use in boat or dog-sledge trips.
The scarcity of the ribbon seal and its solitary habits will serve to safeguard it from the destructive pursuit which endangers the existence of some of its relatives.
POLAR BEAR (Thalarctos maritimus)
Both summer and winter the great ice bear of the frozen north is appropriately clothed in white. It is also distinguished from all other bears by its long neck, slender pointed head, and the quantity of fur on the soles of its feet. It is a circumpolar species, the limits of whose range nearly everywhere coincide with the southern border of the pack ice. The great majority live permanently on the ice, often hundreds of miles from the nearest land.
During summer the polar bear rarely visits shore, but in winter commonly extends its wanderings to the Arctic islands and the bordering mainland coasts. In winter it ranges southward with the extension of the ice pack. In spring, by an unexpectedly sudden retreat of the ice, individual bears are often left south of their usual summer haunts, sometimes being found swimming in the open sea far off the coast of Labrador. Occasionally some of those which migrate southward with the ice through Bering Straits fail to turn north early enough and are stranded on islands in Bering Sea.
That a carnivore requiring so much food as the polar bear can maintain itself on the frozen polar sea is one of the marvels of adaptation to environment. The activity of these bears through the long black night of the far north is proved by records of Arctic explorers, whose caches have been destroyed and ships visited by them during that season. In this period of privation they range far over land and ice in search of food, and when in desperate need do not hesitate to attack men. I have seen several Eskimos who had been seriously injured in such encounters, and learned of other instances along the Arctic coast of Alaska in which hunters had been killed on the sea ice in winter. During the summer season of plenty, polar bears are mild and inoffensive, so far as men are concerned. At that time they wander over the pack ice, swimming in open leads, and, when hungry, killing a seal or young walrus.
When spring opens, many polar bears are near the Arctic coast. At that time the natives along the northeast coast of Siberia kill many of them on the ice with dogs and short-hafted, long-bladed lances. The dogs bring the bear to bay, and the hunter, watching his opportunity, runs in and thrusts the lance through its heart.