BIG GAME OF NORTH AMERICA 365 



To finish these remarks, and convey, if possible, some idea 

 of hunting the grizzly, let me take a leaf from my note-book, 

 kept in Alaska in the autumn of 1891, whilst hunting with my 

 friend Mr. Arnold Pike. 



Nature has a way of always suiting her creatures to their 

 environments, but none of her creatures are more exactly 

 suited to their surroundings than U. horribilis. Savage and 

 silent and grey as the grizzly is, the forests and waters amongst 

 which he chooses to dwell are more grim, more savage, and 

 more forbidding than himself. The part of Alaska in which 

 we were hunting in 1891 appears to have escaped from that 

 process described in Genesis by which the waters which were 

 above the firmament were divided from the waters which were 

 under the firmament. On the Stickeen river there is no 

 firmament. As a rule, a damp darkness broods upon the face 

 of the deep, and the waters which should be above touch and 

 mingle with the waters which should be below. There is no 

 dry belt between the bottom of the sea and the roof of heaven, 

 at least in that district which lies between Wrangel and Tele- 

 graph Creek, in the month of October. We were out for forty 

 days and forty nights, and I cannot swear to more than three 

 and a half moderately fine days in that time : a fine day in 

 Alaska being one in which you wear oilskins and gum boots, 

 and go to bed in a dry shirt ; whilst on a wet one you wear 

 gum boots and oilskins, and go to bed to dry your shirt. 

 The river Stickeen runs its rapid course between dank forests, 

 grey at the top with mildew, and hung with dark mosses, in 

 which the devil's club forms an impenetrable undergrowth, and 

 even the pines are thorny. The pace of the river is such that 

 you make as much in one day, drifting down it, as you made 

 in five pulling and poling up it ; and your camping-grounds are 

 of necessity upon barren sandspits, for nothing but a bear 

 could force its way into this timber. In this land no gentle 

 things live : there are no deer, no small birds, no squirrels, no 

 sunlight nothing but a few wolves, a stray seal, which comes 

 whistling up on the tide in the grey of the morning, great 



