When their skins are in season, a number of traps and guns are set, and the greatest part of them are caught in one month, though some few are found during the whole Winter. I have frequently known near forty killed in one night within half a mile of Prince of Wales's Fort; but this seldom happens after the first or second night. When Churchill River is frozen over near the mouth, the greatest part of the surviving white Foxes cross the river, and direct their course to the Southward, and in some years assemble in considerable numbers at York Fort and Severn River. Whether they are all killed, or what becomes of those which escape, is very uncertain; but it is well known that none of them ever migrate again to the Northward. Besides taking a trap so freely, they are otherwise so simple, that I have seen them shot off-hand while feeding, the same as sparrows in a heap of chaff, sometimes two or three at a shot. This sport is always most successful in moon-light nights; for in the daytime they generally keep in their holes among the rocks, and under the hollow ice at high-water-mark.
These animals will prey on each other as readily as on any other animals they find dead in a trap, or wounded by gun; which renders them so destructive, that I have known upwards of one hundred and twenty Foxes of different {365} colours eaten, and destroyed in their traps by their comrades in the course of one Winter, within half a mile of the Fort.
The Naturalists seem still at a loss to know their breeding-places, which are doubtless in every part of the coast they frequent. Several of them breed near Churchill, and I have seen them in considerable numbers all along the West coast of Hudson's Bay, particularly at Cape Esquimaux, Navel's Bay, and Whale Cove, also on Marble Island; so that with some degree of confidence we may affirm, that they breed on every part of the coast they inhabit during the Summer season. They generally have from three to five young at a litter; more I never saw with one old one. When young they are all over almost of a sooty black, but as the fall advances, the belly, sides, and tail turn to a light ash-colour; the back, legs, some part of the face, and the tip of the tail, changes to a lead colour; but when the Winter sets in they become perfectly white: the ridge of the back and the tip of the tail are the last places that change to that colour; and there are few of them which have not a few dark hairs at the tip of the tail all the Winter. If taken young, they are easily domesticated in some degree, but I never saw one that was fond of being caressed; and they are always impatient of confinement.
The White Fox.
White Foxes, when killed at any considerable distance from the sea coast, (where they cannot possibly get any {366} thing to prey upon, except rabbits, mice, and partridges,) are far from being disagreeable eating. And on Marble Island I have shot them when they were equal in flavour to a rabbit; probably owing to their feeding entirely on eggs and young birds; but near Churchill River they are as rank as train-oil.
The Lynx, or Wild Cat.
The Lynx, or Wild Cat,[130] is very scarce to the North of Churchill; but is exactly the same as those which are found in great plenty to the South West. I have observed the tracks of this animal at Churchill, and seen them killed, and have eaten of their flesh in the neighbourhood of York Fort. The flesh is white, and nearly as good as that of a rabbit. They are, I think, much larger than that which is described in the Arctic Zoology; they never approach near the settlements in Hudson's Bay, and are very destructive to rabbits; they seldom leave a place which is frequented by rabbits till they have nearly killed them all.
The Polar or White Bear.