98 BIG GAME SHOOTING IN ALASKA chap. 



the place of dust. In both countries I have remarked the 

 surprising ease with which the wind will flatten the best- 

 pitched tent, and compel its unwilling occupants to face the 

 elements in their futile attempts to fix ropes, etc., securely. 



May 31 dawned at last, a fine warm day, a harbinger of 

 the long-expected spring, which was then some three or four 

 weeks overdue. I remarked to Little before leaving camp 

 in the morning, that if we were going to kill a May bear we 

 must make haste about it ; and furthermore, that as it was 

 now some five weeks since we first set foot on Kodiak Island, 

 during which time we had not seen a bear at all, I felt rather 

 like my Norwegian boatman and gaffer on the Namsen 

 River, Norway, who has a quaint saying when the river is 

 in bad fishing order. His morning greeting on such 

 occasions is, " I have generally a good hope, but I have not 

 a good hope to-day." 



We took our daily tramp across the desolate plain in 

 front of the camp, and sat down on a small sand-hill to scan 

 the hills with our glasses. After looking in every direction 

 without success, and being on the point of returning to camp, 

 about 2 P.M., I saw with the naked eye what appeared to 

 me to be two foxes playing on a snow patch high up on the 

 face of a hill opposite where we sat. Turning our glasses 

 on them, one beast appeared to be nearly white, and we said 

 at once, " They are only caribou," and too high up to be worth 

 going after. This seemed more particularly true as there 

 were a wide river and several streams to wade which lay 

 between us and the hills. After watching them closely for 

 some time, the animals began to walk along the hillside, and 

 with such an unmistakably clumsy gait that we both jumped 

 up, exclaiming, " Bears at last." Such was undoubtedly the 

 case, but we were over two miles from the foot of the hill, 



