1 80 BIG GAME SHOOTING IN ALASKA chap. 



the return to camp, late in the evening, I shot a fine ewe. 

 She suddenly jumped up from a hollow in the ground, and 

 ran across our front about lOO yards away. The men shouted 

 at me to shoot, for about the twentieth time in the past forty- 

 eight hours. She appeared to me a big ewe, and as I wanted 

 one to present to the British Museum, and furthermore held a 

 special permit from the Minister of Agriculture at Washington, 

 which empowered me to kill two sheep for this purpose at 

 any time of year, I let fly a bullet at her. The date of this 

 was August 2 1, and little did I think what a storm in a teacup 

 that shot was to raise along Cook's Inlet at a later date. The 

 ewe galloped away downhill and out of sight as if nothing 

 had happened, I said to Pitka, " I missed her." He replied 

 " You hit 'um all right ; me find 'um pretty soon, you bet." 

 On looking over the brow of the hill, we saw a long gentle 

 slope, and some lOO yards away the ewe lying dead. The 

 men were delighted at the prospect of a "good few" meals 

 of fresh mutton, I must admit that the same prospect 

 appealed somewhat to me, as we had again got down to a diet 

 of what the miners call " beans straight." My immediate 

 interest was to skin and take out the leg-bones, etc., of the 

 animal carefully, for a museum specimen. Unless I had 

 personally seen it, I should not have believed the following 

 circumstance, neither do I suppose that all who may read it 

 will do so ; but on opening the carcass, we found that my 

 bullet had taken the ewe behind the left shoulder, and 

 expanding had passed clean through the heart, which was 

 blown to atoms, then passing out on the other side, it had 

 blown away part of the right shoulder and left a gaping 

 wound over 3 inches large on the right side. And yet, 

 with this awful injury, the animal had run some 140 yards 

 before falling dead. How any living creature can have 



