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 mid 
friend Mr. Armold 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. Aorribilis. 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. Asa 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 
