A Bear Hunt in the Adirondacks. 229 



or twelve feet, snapping the heel rivet of one snow shoe 

 and tearing loose the foot straps of the other; filling 

 my gun muzzle with snow and slightly wounding my 

 left thigh, on which I fell. Sturgis had far outstripped 

 me when I reached the road ; and, being dinnerless and 

 lame, and night approaching, I took the way to the 

 hotel. 



Sturgis had already arrived and lay upon a sofa per- 

 fectly exhausted; he declared that, trapper and moose 

 hunter as he was, he had never been so tired. It appeared 

 that he had followed the trail across the road into the 

 swamp of the Cundjemonk river; across the river, through 

 water a foot or so deep over the ice, and up an evergreen 

 covered mountain known as Rift hill. 



From where the Cundjemonk empties into the bay of the 

 Sacoudaga river, a mountain ridge follows the Cundjemonk 

 two or three miles, on the south-east side of that stream. 

 This ridge has two summits separated by a little valley; 

 at the south-west is Burnt mountain, a bare and desolate 

 rock; and at the north-east, up the Cundjemonk, is the 

 Rift hill, darkly green with hemlocks ; its name derived 

 from a cleft or little pass that severs the summit; a 

 cleft twenty or twenty-five feet wide, perhaps an average 

 depth of twenty feet, with perpendicular walls. Around 

 the summit of this mountain Sturgis chased the bear 

 several times, yet never caught sight of the animal. 

 When he turned and ran back on the trail, in order to 

 outwit and meet the bear, he invariably found that the 

 bear had done the same, and "back-tracked" also. Be- 

 sides the bear would perform the technical back-track ; 

 which is stopping and walking backwards in the tracks 

 already made, a considerable distance, and then leaping 

 out clear of them to take another course. This generally 

 deceives the dog, but avails little with the skilful hunter. 



