DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70302#0334
298
ACCOUNT OF THE ARCTIC FOXES.
During my unfortunate abode on Beering’s Island,
says Steller, I had opportunities more than enough to
study the nature of these animals. The narrative of the
innumerable tricks they played us, might vie with Al-
bertus Jalius’s History of the Apes on the island of Saxen-
burg. They forced themselves into our habitations by
night as well as by day, stealing all that they could
carry off, even things that were of no use to them, as
knives, sticks, and clothes. They were so inconceivably
ingenious as to roll down our casks of provisions, each
weighing several poods (a pood is equal to forty Russian
pounds, each somewhat less than the English pound)
and then steal the meat out of them so ably, that, at
first, we could not persuade ourselves to ascribe the theft
to them. As we stripped an animal of its skin, it often
happened that we could not avoid stabbing two or three
foxes, on account of their rapacity in tearing the fiesh
out of our hands. If we buried it ever so carefully, and
even added stones to the weight that was upon it, they
not only found it out, but with their shoulders shoved
away the stones, lying under them, and helping one
another with all their might. If, in order to secure it, we
fixed any animal on the top of a high post, they either
dug up the earth at the bottom, and thus tumbled the
whole down, or one of them clambered up, and with in-
credible artifice and dexterity, threw down what was upon
it.
They watched all our motions, and accompanied us
whatever we were about to do. If the sea threw up an
animal of any kind, they devoured it, before we could
arrive to rescue it from them : and if they could not con-
sume the whole at once, they dragged it in portions to
the mountains, where they buried it under stones before
our eyes, running backward and forward as long as any
thing remained to be conveyed away. Others, in the
mean
ACCOUNT OF THE ARCTIC FOXES.
During my unfortunate abode on Beering’s Island,
says Steller, I had opportunities more than enough to
study the nature of these animals. The narrative of the
innumerable tricks they played us, might vie with Al-
bertus Jalius’s History of the Apes on the island of Saxen-
burg. They forced themselves into our habitations by
night as well as by day, stealing all that they could
carry off, even things that were of no use to them, as
knives, sticks, and clothes. They were so inconceivably
ingenious as to roll down our casks of provisions, each
weighing several poods (a pood is equal to forty Russian
pounds, each somewhat less than the English pound)
and then steal the meat out of them so ably, that, at
first, we could not persuade ourselves to ascribe the theft
to them. As we stripped an animal of its skin, it often
happened that we could not avoid stabbing two or three
foxes, on account of their rapacity in tearing the fiesh
out of our hands. If we buried it ever so carefully, and
even added stones to the weight that was upon it, they
not only found it out, but with their shoulders shoved
away the stones, lying under them, and helping one
another with all their might. If, in order to secure it, we
fixed any animal on the top of a high post, they either
dug up the earth at the bottom, and thus tumbled the
whole down, or one of them clambered up, and with in-
credible artifice and dexterity, threw down what was upon
it.
They watched all our motions, and accompanied us
whatever we were about to do. If the sea threw up an
animal of any kind, they devoured it, before we could
arrive to rescue it from them : and if they could not con-
sume the whole at once, they dragged it in portions to
the mountains, where they buried it under stones before
our eyes, running backward and forward as long as any
thing remained to be conveyed away. Others, in the
mean