ON THE CZAR'S HIGHWAY. 75 



ture, hastens to notify a sportsman of his discovery. 

 He offers to sell the bear, much as if he had it in a sack, 

 safely secured ; with the understanding, however, that 

 if bruin should have sniffed danger, and made off before 

 he takes the sportsman to the spot, the bargain be- 

 comes null and void. 



The usual price demanded for a bear is a hundred 

 rubles. He is actually sold in his lair, and the peas- 

 ant's services consist in guiding the sportsman to the 

 spot and pointing out the breath-hole in the snow. 

 Whether the sportsman succeeds in bagging the bear 

 or not, — that, of course, being no fault of the peas- 

 ant's, — he pays the price agreed upon. Many sports- 

 men have a standing agreement with the bear-finders 

 of the surrounding district, that he is to have the 

 option on any finds they make. And when a sports- 

 man has earned a reputation among the peasants as a 

 dead shot, they often prefer to sell the bears to him by 

 weight, bargaining for so much per pound instead of a 

 lump sum. 



This is, in fact, the method preferred by old bear- 

 finders, who have by long experience learned to judge 

 of the bear's size by the dimensions of the hole in the 

 snow. They shrewdly take advantage of their superior 

 bear-craft to drive a sharp bargain at the expense of 

 the city sportsman, selling the bear for a specific sum 

 of money if they think the find a small animal, and by 

 the pound if the hole indicates a big one. 



When the writer was at Count Tolstoi's, the famous 

 author showed me the scars of an old scalp-wound that 

 had been inflicted by a bear. In his ante-literary days 

 the Count was very fond of bear-hunting, and, on 



