EUROPEAN BIG GAME 155 



they call themselves, say that a bear has the strength of ten men 

 and the wisdom of five. Consequently they fear him extremely 

 and with good cause, I myself having seen a Lapp horribly 

 scarred on the head and face by a bear. My own experience 

 is that brown bears invariably charge, if they can, on receiving 

 a bullet. 



There are two ways of hunting the Northern brown bear 

 which have proved successful for the single hunter : either by 

 tracking the animal with a carefully trained dog, or by discover- 

 ing the places where he finds some special delicacy, and waiting 

 at a considerable distance for him to come to feed, then 

 stalking him and getting a shot. Further south, in Norway, 

 where there is a larger and settled population, a drive or ' clap- 

 jaght ' is often organised, but unless extremely well arranged by 

 a person in authority who thoroughly knows the ground as 

 well as the men and the habits of the bear, the drive in my 

 perhaps unhappy experience is seldom successful. 



Too often the drivers are armed with guns and rifles, and 

 I have vivid recollections of spending an animated twenty 

 minutes lying flat on my stomach with Remington rifle-bullets 

 whistling overhead, and an excitable brother sportsman dancing 

 to and fro with a double-barrelled rifle at full cock, jumping to 

 fire at the first thing that stirred. I prefer less excitement, 

 and less motion in the play. There is another method of 

 hunting the bear, when he has hibernated in the den he has 

 found during the autumn, carefully composed of moss and dry 

 leaves, under some rock or tree root. This style of hunting 

 I have not seen, but the Earl of Kilmorey has kindly for- 

 warded me an account of it. As I said before, bears are 

 excessively fond of berries, and nothing is more amusing than 

 to come up to a bear which has made a really good meal, 

 and having over-eaten himself with berries has been attacked 

 by subsequent stomach-ache. His complaints, moans, and 

 attitudes are so human as to be irresistibly ludicrous. 



When I first went to Russian Lapland I walked many 

 miles in the sun-lit nights of summer, tracking, or endeavouring 



