1 1 2 KA MSCHA TKA . [chap. 



greatly to our disgust ; and, though we spent some time in following 

 them up, we did not succeed in getting sight of them again. They 

 had doubtless got scent of us, and were far away. Bears are 

 always much more disturbed by getting wind of human beings 

 than by any noise the latter make, or even by their appearance ; 

 and the hunter, although his movements are by no means those of 

 the stealthy-footed Malay, knows that unless he works to wmdward 

 his trouble is in vain. The number of these creatures in Kams- 

 chatka must be enormous. Afanasi told us that there are hunters 

 who have killed over four hundred in their lifetime, and we heard 

 that at a little hamlet on the Bolcheresk Eiver more than ninety 

 had been shot and trapped during the summer. July, August, and 

 September are the best months for them, as they haunt the river- 

 banks at that season for the fish, and are in most excellent 

 condition. 



The heat at noon was nearly as great as it had been on the 

 previous day, and the business of supplying our larder with 

 ptarmigan for the many mouths we had to feed involved a very 

 considerable amount of exertion ; and, as we ploughed through the 

 soft moss, sinking up to our knees at every step, " larding the lean 

 earth as we walked along," it was difficult to realise that at night- 

 fall we should be back again in an Arctic climate. The birds were 

 luckily tolerably abundant, and we had obtamed a sufficient 

 number on pitching camp for the night. Capercailzie apparently 

 were rare. We had seen but few, and up to this period had only 

 succeeded in obtaining one, and our game-birds were consequently 

 limited to the Willow Grouse. 



The Englishman travelling in Kamschatka who has reached his 

 destination, not by the desert steppes of lonely Siberia, but by way 

 of Ceylon and sweltering Singapore, where almost every bird 

 he sees is unfamiliar to him, cannot fail to be stmck, how^ever 

 unobservant he may be, with the resemblance of the avifauna of 

 the new region in which he finds himself to that of his own country. 

 He disturbs a Turnstone or a Golden Plover as he lands, perhaps, 



