XXVIII 



MORE ABOUT BEARS IN THE ROCKIES 

 1899 



THE want of success last year with the hears only made me 

 the keener to try my fortune once more, and having heard 

 that one of the most experienced hear hunters was ready to take 

 me to "the hest country in British Columhia " for grizzlies, I 

 at once made arrangements, and early in May joined my guide 

 "somewhere" on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Owing, how- 

 ever, to the lateness of the season and the large amount of snow 

 which still remained on the mountain-tops, we had to postpone 

 our start for nearly a month, and then only with great difficulty 

 were we able to cross a certain summit and to get into the 

 selected valley. 



During the weary days of waiting at the hotel every loafer 

 and prospector had tales to tell of personal encounters and 

 undesired meetings with bears, which animals according to the 

 narrators seemed, to say the least of it, very numerous and very 

 large and ferocious ; in fact, their number, size, and ferocity 

 apparently increased with the amount of whiskey in the atmo- 

 sphere, an experience, by the way, also recorded by some one 

 else. 



Well, at last we reached our camping-ground in the promised 

 land, and pitched our tents in a narrow valley formed by two 

 nearly parallel mountain ranges. Our ground was further 

 narrowed by a river on one side and huge masses of snow on the 

 other, which still remained piled up at the foot of the mountains, 

 the result of snow-slides in the early spring. It necessitated the 

 most perfect system of irrigation to keep our tents dry from the 



242 



