I 68 BEARS IN THE FOREST. 



came under his notice in British Columbia, with refer- 

 ence to the grizzly bear, the largest and heaviest of 

 the genus " Ursus " - 



" Suddenly (he says) a brown mass was seen not ten paces 

 in front of us. Silently it rose upright, making, as far as I 

 could hear, no sound at all, and as suddenly before I had 

 time to fire, gave one quick lurch, and was gone into the 

 bush, as quickly and as silently as if he had been only a 

 British bunny, and all that was left of him was a little column 

 of yellow dust. 



" Except for the noises we made, and the chattering of 

 some squirrels" (says the same author) "intense silence 

 reigned in the woods. There are no birds, no life anywhere 

 whatever is in the forest (and you can't help feeling that it 

 is full of live beasts), is endowed with ghostlike silence of 

 tread, and the power of remaining invisible." * 



Similar remarks were made by Lord Milton and Dr. 

 Cheadle in their interesting work on The North West 

 Passage by Land, made by them in 1862 64; their 

 experience of the great forests of British Columbia 

 being that "animal life was scarce, and the solemn 

 stillness unbroken by note of bird, or sound of living 

 creature." Such are invariably the impressions first 

 created upon the minds of sportsmen by a hunting 

 tour in these tremendous expanses of gigantic timber, 

 which still extend over a vast area in North Western 

 America with but few intervals of open country, until 

 the mountain region is reached. Here, spacious tracts 

 of open country generally extend above the regular 

 limits of tree growth, where the game has to be 

 regularly stalked under the usual conditions of moun- 

 tain shooting. These barren grounds are mostly situated 



* A Sportsman's Eden, by C. Phillips Wolley. 



