The Polar Bear or the White Bear, though common on the sea-coast, is seldom found in its Winter retreats by any of our Chipewyan Indians, except near Churchill River; nor do I suppose that the Inuit see or kill any of them more frequently during that season. It is rather singular that the Polar Bears are seldom found on the land during the Winter, on which account it is supposed they go out on the ice, and keep near the edge of the water, while the females that are pregnant seek shelter at the skirts of the woods, and dig themselves dens in the deepest drifts of snow they can find, where they remain in a state of inactivity, and without food, from the latter end of December or January, till the latter end of March; at which time they leave their dens, and bend their course towards the sea with their cubs; which, in general, are two in number. Not Withstanding the great magnitude of those animals when full grown, yet their young are not larger than rabbits, and when they leave their dens, their steps on the snow not bigger than a crown-piece, when those of their mother measured near fifteen inches long, and nine inches broad. Some of the full grown ones are heavier than the largest of our common oxen. Indeed I was once at the killing of one, when one of its hind feet being cut off at the ankle, weighed fifty-four pounds. The male have a bone in their penis, as a dog has, and of course unite in copulation. The time of their courtship may be in July or August, for at those times I have often been at the killing of them, when the males were so attached to their mistresses, that after the female was killed, the male would put his two fore-paws over and suffer himself to be shot before he would quit her.