84 BIG GAME SHOOTING IN ALASKA chap, v 



" Bears ain't what they used to be ? No, sir ! Why, 

 some years ago I was walking along a narrow sort of pathway 

 on the face of some steep rocks, sort of prospecting for coal, 

 when I heard something coming. It turned out to be a 

 bear, and I had to shoot it to get it out of the way. The 

 path was not very long, but darn me if there were not six 

 of them bears following each other like dogs, and I had to 

 shoot the lot before I could get on." The remarkable thing 

 about the last yarn is that the writer has good reasons for 

 believing that the main facts are true. 



The trip from Seattle to Sitka in fine weather, early in 

 the spring, is one of which the beauty beats all description. 

 The route lies through a long succession of narrow channels 

 and fjords which closely resemble those of Norway, but are 

 on a grander scale. On each side of these fjords rise 

 towering mountains, with their heavily timbered slopes deep 

 in snow, running right down to the water's edge. Here 

 and there a huge glacier intervenes, one end of which 

 reaches to the sea, and the other goes winding away out of 

 sight behind the snow-clad peaks in the far distance. As for 

 the Alaskan mountains (to use the words of a writer on the 

 Italian heights), " they are so utterly unlike any other hills 

 in the world, and so extremely beautiful in their own peculiar 

 way, that to describe them would be an idle and a useless 

 task, which could only serve to exhibit the vanity of the 

 writer and the feebleness of his pen." 



The amount of snow still lying on the ground did not 

 look hopeful for the early appearance of the bears, and on 

 arrival at Valdez it was not comforting to see the snow piled 

 up some 15 feet high in the streets of that small town, nor to 

 be gravely informed that they had experienced a record 

 severe winter, during which the total snowfall had rather 



