194 BIG GAME SHOOTING IN ALASKA chap. 



ram, and it was no mean performance, as the beast must have 

 been fully 300 yards away and was going fast. He wanted 

 me to go across and look at the beast with him, but I was so 

 disgusted at losing another chance at a good ram, and all 

 through my own stupidity in not walking in front, that I said 

 I would return to camp and send out the natives to skin and 

 bring in the beast. 



It turned out that Glyn had been getting his sheep at a 

 camp some six or seven miles farther up in the hills, and was 

 now on his way back to the lake, having merely camped at 

 this spot on the chance of picking up a black bear, of which 

 species he had seen several feeding on the blue berries that 

 covered the hillsides around this spot. These berries form a 

 very favourite food of the bears at this time of year. 



Glyn undertook to pilot us next morning across the 

 mountains to his old camp, where we arrived soon after 

 noon. Here there was a small grove of cotton-wood trees, 

 which afforded the only decent fuel to be found anywhere 

 in the neighbourhood. The surrounding hills were by no 

 means difficult to climb, and providing that all the rams had 

 not taken to the precipices along the edge of the glaciers, I 

 had hopes of getting some good heads. Glyn did not inspire 

 me with great confidence when he said that towards the 

 end of his stay there the rams had all worked from the 

 hill-tops down along the precipitous sides of the mountains 

 overhanging a big glacier about three miles from the camp. 

 There even he had difficulty to get them, and his graphic 

 description of having to shoot whilst half hanging over a 

 precipice at rams standing on crags below, which, when he 

 killed them, went hurtling into space, and fell sheer some 

 2000 feet on to the glacier beneath, did not appeal to me as 

 being a pleasure. He said it was marvellous how the natives 



