120 BIG GAME SHOOTING IN ALASKA chap. 



fish. He added that two friends of his had come over from 

 Unga Island some seasons ago, and established themselves 

 here for a few weeks in May during the big run of candle- 

 fish, at the time when the bears come for miles to feed on 

 those thrown up by the tide, being particularly partial to 

 this form of food. These two men were stated to have 

 killed over thirty bears there in a few weeks, and on making 

 inquiries afterwards at Unga, I found this to be correct. 

 The run of oolichan being then over, it was useless for us 

 to attempt a landing here on the chance of seeing bears, 

 so we headed for a place called Ivanoff Bay, where bears had 

 again been reported plentiful. The next evening we made 

 a landing in this bay, and found a very good barabara or 

 native hut, which had been built by some white men who 

 came occasionally from Unga to hunt caribou for meat. 

 Two rivers run into this bay, and coming as they do across 

 a large open plain, with numerous creeks running into the 

 rivers, it appeared an ideal place for bears to come fishing 

 when the salmon were running. We had been told that 

 the Alaskan red salmon ran up one of these rivers, and a 

 large lake was shown on the chart at the head of the river, 

 which led us to believe the statement. Subsequent search 

 by Glyn revealed the fact that this lake did not exist, and 

 consequently the red salmon were conspicuous by their 

 absence. There were, however, a number of humpbacks 

 and dog salmon already in the mouth of the river, and 

 some good bear trails along the banks induced Glyn to stay 

 here with Little and one native. They spent the greater part 

 of the next day unloading stores and settling into their new 

 quarters, whilst I landed in the bidarki on the opposite side 

 of the bay to take a look round. On nearing the shore we 

 saw five caribou walking along the beach and looking very 



