II 



GRIZZLY AND BLACK BEAR HUNTING 



AT daybreak next morning we crossed swift-running Rasp- 

 i\ berry Creek on a substantial log bridge, and started up 

 the burnt slopes on the opposite side of the canon. Then we 

 passed through a straggling growth of stunted spruce, and after 

 that the moss and flower covered upper country, finally reach- 

 ing the broken lava and snow-patches of the pass itself. Near 

 the timber-line we met the first porcupine and promptly killed 

 it with a club for the Indians, who from this time on averaged 

 eating at least one porcupine per diem. 



These Taltan Indians are enormous meat-eaters. Besides 

 finishing two or three meals of moose, caribou, sheep, or bear 

 meat a day, our guides would often get up at night to make a 

 feast on porcupine. They were adept at skinning these animals 

 without getting any of the quills in their hands, but usually 

 being too hungry or lazy to take the trouble of skinning them, 

 they would bum the quills off by placing the porcupine in the 

 camp-fire. From this time on our camp was adorned by the 

 charred corpses of porcupines and gophers spitted on sharpened 

 stakes around the fire. The whistling marmot and the moun- 

 tain gopher inhabited all the open above the timber-line, and 

 the piercing whistle of the former and nervous chirping of the 

 latter, combined with the cackling of ptarmigan and the rum- 

 bling of the glaciers, were the only sounds heard in this bleak 

 upper country. We camped about one o'clock at timber-line 

 on the far side of the pass, where, across the broad, timbered 



322 



