148 HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 



higher than our heads, rendered our progress difficult and 

 disagreeable, and soon drove us back to the stream, a 

 veritable mountain brook, up whose bed we slowly climbed 

 or waded. Here and there were treacherous pools covering 

 quicksands in spits and banks, deposited by the water 

 running in narrow courses, and, but for mutual assistance, 

 we might have come to grief several times. 



The bears also seem to have chosen the stream for their 

 highway, judging by the numerous tracks we came across, 

 for at least two she-bears and their cubs had preceded us 

 only a short time before. One must have been a large 

 specimen, for the narrowest part of her fore print was nine 

 inches wide. We kept a sharp look out ; for a she-bear 

 with cubs is an awkward customer at any time, but especially 

 in a high-banked stream among quicksands and boulders. 

 As we got higher up the mountain side, we left the fog 

 behind us, and an occasional break in the leafy arcade gave 

 us a glimpse of the sun shining brightly overhead. The 

 trees, mostly silver birch and alder, were festooned with 

 long beards of delicate moss of a yellowish white, looking 

 prematurely old, though scarcely past their youth. There 

 was a monotonous sameness in the size of the trees, nor was 

 the reason far to seek. Prostrate trunks that bridged the 

 stream at intervals, and cast a darkening shade upon the 

 waters, were always those with greater girth, whose very 

 vitality had proved their ruin. Existence in a leaden, 

 socialistic equality was just possible where the rudest wind 

 could only sway the topmost branches ; but the vigour 

 which sought a higher level served but to court the full 

 fury of the storm. Unfitted to their environment, those 

 trees which were ambitious to domineer over the humbler 

 sort paid the penalty by a heavier crash. The mountain 

 ash, or witch tree, wiser perhaps in its occult knowledge, 

 bent its gorgeous clusters of white flowers more humbly 

 over the stream. The wild vine and honeysuckle grew r 

 profusely, twining themselves round the trunks, or drooping 

 gracefully from the branches ; while the homely polypodium 



