154 The Grizzly Bear 



the trail they stopped, stood up, sniffed anxiously at the 

 air, and then dropped down and sidled off, with uneasy 

 backward glances, as though they not only suspected 

 something wrong, but feared that it might pursue them. 

 This old bear was unusually light in color, appearing in- 

 deed, in that light, almost silvery white over her entire 

 body, while both her cubs, from where I stood, appeared 

 to be almost jet black. After this I waited until it was 

 so dark that I could not see a bear in the timber, and hav- 

 ing obtained no more shots, I returned to camp. 



All this time I had been struggling against a number of 

 difficulties, photographic and electrical. Chief among the 

 latter was the fuse for my flash-pan. I had found no diffi- 

 culty in this regard when using a shutter exposure as slow 

 as one-quarter of a second; but if, as was apt to be the 

 case, there was any daylight remaining, this exposure was 

 too slow and recorded movement on the part of the animal. 

 I had, however, succeeded in finding an extremely fine 

 imported German-silver wire, which fused rapidly enough 

 to allow me to use the shutter exposure of a hundredth 

 second. 



My first supply of this wire having been limited, I had 

 ordered more, and discovered, when too late, that it was 

 of a slightly different size; and hence, to my chagrin, when 

 I came to develop the three exposures which I succeeded 

 in getting, I found that my shutter had worked too rapidly 

 for the fuse, and my plates showed no trace of an image. 



At the time, however, I thought that I was getting along 

 satisfactorily, and the next evening I again set up my cam- 

 era at the same place. It now occurred to me that it might 

 be possible, by reversing my former tactics and leaving my 



