170 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



We had ten days at our disposal. As to our plans, 

 Ivleinschmidt suggested: ''You might spend a few days 

 at Mike's house and hunt the country there for caribou. 

 Meantime I can make a camp inland about seven miles, 

 at a point just north of the volcanoes, and have it all 

 ready for you to hunt bears from there." 



"How long will that take you?" we inquired. 



"About four days." 



So it was agreed. We took our blankets and rifles 

 and Born and the mate landed us at Mike's home. It 

 was a picturesque cluster of little houses on the dunes 

 just above the beach, on which Mike's three pretty little 

 light-haired girls welcomed us. The house was low, w^th 

 hollow wooden walls, nearly two feet thick, filled with 

 turf. Sods were also banked against the sides as high as 

 the windows. A small store stood a few yards off, and 

 other outbuildings, a smoke house and several Aleut 

 huts. Inside, the house proper consisted of a living 

 room and two bedrooms. In one of these Mike and his 

 wife and four children slept, and we were given the other. 

 Mike's wife was a very pretty half-breed, about twenty- 

 three years old. He was twice that age. 



We were off across the tundra just after sunrise. 

 More than twenty miles it rolled to Bering Sea without a 

 considerable height of land. Small hills, little more than 

 two hundred feet above the bottoms, provided good look- 

 outs, however, and from one of these I counted nmety- 

 nine lakes lying in the hollows on all sides. Nearly all 

 of them were shallow, some depressed a man's height 

 beneath the plain and fringed with alders, others bor- 

 dered by marshes. Swan, ptarmigan, teal and sandhill 

 cranes, red fox, ground squirrels, porcupines and caribou 

 we saw alive. There were some old land-otter trails. 



