The Bear and the Bison. 161 



Bruin, but also because there is extremely little to be learnt from 

 occasional encounters. About no sport is there such an element 

 of luck ; and I am sure I am not the only man who has wandered 

 about wild regions for months at a time without setting eyes on 

 the shuffling form of even as much as a black bear. Nor am I 

 alone, I fancy, in experiencing such instances of bad luck as 

 happen to the most persevering. Bear straying right into camp 

 and being slain by the cook lying lazily in his tent, while the 

 rifle that should have done the deed is being carried from dawn 

 to dusk all over the mountains by a weary hunter, are not 

 the least annoying instances which have personally happened to 

 me. 



Before leaving the subject of bear varieties I should like to say 

 that the division made by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt in his capital 

 " The Wilderness Hunter" struck me as an eminently sensible one. 

 He divides the bear of North America, leaving the Arctic bear out 

 of the question, into two classes the tree climbers, who have short 

 claws and a soft fur, and the long-clawed non-climbers with coarse 

 fur, the chief mark of distinction being the claws, and the claws 

 alone. It is one which settles all question as to identity, even 

 if one has no more than the track on soft ground to go by. That 

 the extremes in the short-clawed kind are as wide apart, specially 

 regarding weight, as those in the long-clawed kind is perfectly 

 true, but the same is, I believe, the case in any other sub-division 

 of Bruin's race by the various distinguishing marks which are the 

 stock in trade of the majority of bear hunters. 



There is no doubt that the extreme north-west corner of 

 British Columbia and, even more so, Alaska, are the best ground 

 for bear, and the stories told by creditable sportsmen of the size of 

 the various sorts to be found in the latter region are enough to send 

 a young blood in hot haste to these northern hunting grounds 

 where, if he is as energetic and as thirsty for the blood of Bruin as 

 the mosquitoes are for his, he is bound to succeed beyond the 

 dreams of Nimrod. To read Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr's account of 

 the brown bear which a camp follower of his brought to book, and 



M 



