A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



main camp in a picturesque wooded valley dotted with lakes 

 and barrens, and surrounded by high, open mountains. 



The first day spent in hunting was unproductive, although 

 caribou-tracks were quite plentiful in the timber, and two bulls 

 were seen by the party. Early the next morning, mounted on 

 a saddle-horse apiece and driving one pack-horse ahead of us, 

 Washington Ryan and I left the main camp and rode twelve 

 miles over rough mountains to a burnt plateau. Wash had 

 expected to find numerous caribou in the heavily timbered 

 southern slopes of this plateau, but a day and a half of hard 

 hunting in ideal country convinced us that while there had 

 been many of these animals here during the last month, they 

 had now certainly moved elsewhere. About three-quarters of 

 a mile from our tent the land dropped ofif abruptly into the deep 

 and brushy canon of a branch of Celesta Creek, which eventual- 

 ly wound its way through deeper and more precipitous gorges 

 to Shuswap Lake. This canon was literally choked with berry 

 bushes and an abominable growth, locally known as buckbrush, 

 which grew into an entangling mass from three to five feet high 

 over a large portion of this country. 



The second day after we arrived a light tracking-snow, 

 combined with an exhausting and unsuccessful day's work in 

 the wet underbrush, revealed to us the fact that a number 

 of grizzlies were feeding on the huckleberries in the cafion. 

 Wash had a moment's distant view of a disappearing bear, 

 which had been alarmed by our noisy approach through the 

 brush and was climbing up the opposite slope. We tried to 

 follow up one of the largest tracks that we found, but were 

 forced to give it up, after five hours' tracking, on account of the 

 disappearance of the light snowfall. Shortly after abandoning 

 the trail we heard several rifle-shots from the sides of a near-by 

 snow -covered peak. I afterward ascertained that they came 

 from Fuguet shooting at two grizzlies under peculiar circum- 

 stances. For several hours he and Dell had been following the 



