HUNTING ON THE UPPER GANDER 127 



animal whose portrait is given here, taken from various ' 

 angles. It is enough to say that I had secured a perfect 

 head of forty-nine points, the brows in particular being extra- 

 ordinary. In his long experience Saunders said that he had 

 never seen a more perfect caribou head, and that it was 

 equal in quality to the head killed by Selous two years 

 previously ; although not quite so large in the beam as that 

 head, the brows and bays are considerably finer. It is not 

 often that a sportsman has secured two "great" heads in 

 one season, and so I was grateful for the necessity that had 

 compelled me to shoot this last stag. Had not the canoe 

 broken down he would certainly have been left alone. 



The men took about two hours doing the last mile from 

 Little Gull River to where the fallen stag lay. It was 

 becoming dark and threatening to rain, so, having no 

 camera, I got out my sketch-book and made a rapid outline 

 of the fallen monarch as he lay. Before I had finished 

 heavy drops began to fall, so we made camp as quickly as 

 possible, and had just got the shelter spread and a blazing 

 birch fire started when the storm burst upon us. 



The rain fell in torrents till midnight, when it suddenly 

 ceased. Such a downfall, though severe, made little differ- 

 ence to the river, as the whole country was so parched that 

 it would require two days of such rain to fill the burns and 

 marshes, and so affect the main stream. All the next day 

 (21st September) the men toiled down the river, and at dusk 

 reached the Serpentine Hill, where, on the hills above, I 

 had killed the two large stags. There was still about an 

 hour of daylight left, so I went up the hill on the chance 

 of finding a bear at the first carcase, immediately above our 

 old camp. In the dusk I crept slowly forward through the 

 bushes, and waited for some minutes to see if there was any 



