XI AWAY TO THE MOOSE-GROUND 215 



Glyn and I were so unlucky in our attempts to get these 

 black bears, which are very numerous in certain parts of the 

 moose and sheep country, that we began to regard them 

 with a kind of superstition. In fact, after a subsequent 

 misadventure with one of them, which is referred to later, I 

 turned to Pitka, who was present, and said, " After this, if a 

 black bear stands up in the open and looks me in the face at 

 ten yards away, I will be d — d if I shoot at it " ; nor did I 

 do so, but chiefly because I never had the chance. 



A really fine night in the depths of the Alaskan forest has 

 a peculiar charm for those who love silent nature and solitude. 

 As a rule the ordinary sportsman is so dead tired after a long 

 day in the forest, that on return to camp his first idea is to 

 get something to eat, and his second is to roll himself in the 

 blankets. My two natives were no exceptions to their race 

 as regards their powers of eating and going to sleep, and 

 during a spell of particularly fine weather, when all was quiet 

 in camp, being alone and perhaps feeling somewhat senti- 

 mental, I would take my pipe (my best friend, and sole com- 

 forter in rain or sunshine), and seating myself under a very 

 large spruce tree near the camp, would listen to the various 

 forest sounds by night. Doubtless if this work was intended 

 to bristle with sentiment, this would be a very appropriate 

 place to work in an apt quotation from Gray's dear old Elegy, 

 but presuming that, like myself, the majority of my readers are 

 all lovers of the poem, and all rather tired of seeing one man 

 quote another's words to try to express their own sentiments, 

 in similar circumstances, when their vocabulary and powers of 

 stringing words together are not equal to the task of ex- 

 pressing what they think is hurting them ; then I only beg to 

 state that if you, kind reader, will consider the words of the 

 first three verses in the immortal poem as having been 



