A CHROMATIC BEAR HUNT 



sea. Those which front navigable waters 

 have been well stared at by a generation of 

 tourists, but there are other fields which lie 

 back from the coast and are but vaguely 

 mapped, as, for instance, those which debouch 

 upon the Copper River at the head of the 

 delta. It was thither that I had been aching to 

 go these two years past, and it was thither we 

 were headed now in our skiff, the river having 

 finally broken, to investigate for ourselves 

 this place of mystery, to see at close range 

 those famed bear tracks which had smoothed 

 the rocks. 



Considerable ice was running, among the 

 hurrying fragments of which the head of an 

 occasional seal glistened. The delta was bare, 

 but the mile-high mountains at our left were 

 white wherever the cliffs were not too steep. 

 Every crevice and gutter amid the peaks 

 emptied itself at midday in a cascade of snow, 

 and, warmed by the sun, the whole range 

 rumbled under these avalanches, some tiny, 

 some huge, all adding to the vast snow-dumps 

 at the foot of the wall. Whenever, with the 

 glasses, we observed a trail crossing these up- 

 tilted white fields, we landed, crossed the 

 flats, and waded up to it. If it was recent, we 



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