368 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



body had been in my way, but now they were in full view, 

 standing almost up to their shoulders in the stream, still as 

 stone images in the dark shadow of the overhanging bank, 

 their heads turned over their shoulders looking in our direc- 

 tion, and the long silvery ripples running from their legs down 

 stream. It was lucky for me that night that I carried a 

 Paradox, with which a man can shoot at short ranges as if he 

 were snap-shooting at rabbits in covert, for I had to stand up 

 to get a clean shot, I had not a second to lose, and the canoe 

 rocked horribly under my feet. The big beast of the two fell 

 to my first barrel, sinking where she stood, while her mate got 

 my second barrel in the back as he scrambled up the bank, 

 making good his escape for the moment into the dense scrub. 



I don't suppose that the whole incident, from the find until 

 we began to fish up my bear, took a minute, and yet into that 

 minute was crowded a third of the reward for forty days of 

 hard work, short commons and general misery. Is the game 

 worth the candle ? I think it is, but I don't want to persuade 

 any man to be of my way of thinking, nor do I want to convey 

 the impression that all bear hunting is necessarily as grim and 

 miserable as it is in Alaska. But in places where bear hunting 

 is easy, bears are getting scarce (at least, grizzlies are), for their 

 hides bring a good price and there is a bounty upon their 

 scalps as well. The result is that more bears are trapped in 

 one year than would be shot in five under ordinary circum- 

 stances. For inscance, two brothers whom I know killed 

 thirty- five bears in 1890 within a radius of eighty miles of their 

 cabin. Of course, this sort of thing cannot last. 



It seems a pity, as, whether you hunt him among the mists 

 and storms of an Alaskan autumn, or watch for him by a hill 

 at the edge of some dark canyon, until even the bird chiquetta 

 stops her noisy little song, and the outlines of all objects 

 become indistinct and moving, Ursus horribilis is better worth 

 hunting than any other beast, except perhaps the bighorn, in 

 all America. 



P.S. Since writing this, Sir George Lampson has kindly 



