BEAR-HUNTING 



as well join the innumerable caravan of those who 

 really get their grizzlies with a trap.- Committed to 

 no locality, we put our highly select grub-list on 

 board a steamer at Seattle and sailed the ocean blue 

 along the fifteen hundred miles of wholly tin-can 

 and partly tin-horn coast of a country which most 

 folk think is like Siberia for wilderness ; but which 

 is really by far more like Kansas with no wife's 

 folks to fall back on. 



Few climates leave bear robes good after the 

 middle of June. Our bear company started in 

 April for the bear country; but the length of the 

 journey, which brought the end of May upon us, 

 left us very uneasy. To lie in wait at a salmon 

 stream in the summer and pot a mangy bear with no 

 fur on his skin was not included in our business sys- 

 tem. That sort of rug would never get past the 

 household desk. 



In Alaska it rains all the time during the spring, 

 and by and by it rains some more. It was on an 

 especially moist morning, and at about 4 A. M V 

 when our good ship pulled up at the dock at the 

 town of Kodiak, on Kodiak Island, the last and most 

 abandoned of our national possessions. When we 

 bought the territory from Russia we tried to give 

 her back Kodiak Island, but she wouldn't listen to it 

 for a minute, so we have it now. To look at Kodiak 



211 



