124 BIG GAME SHOOTING IN ALASKA chap. 



cut out to cross the narrow space from Popoff Island to the 

 mainland. The weather was vile, and what with a choppy 

 sea and dense fog, it cost us fifteen hours to traverse the 

 same number of miles. It did not take long to land our few 

 stores, the bidarki, and three small tents. On reaching the 

 shore I was met by an Irishman named Burns, who occupied 

 a lonely cabin on the shore, and here he hospitably invited 

 me to spend the night, an offer which I gladly accepted. 

 He had the reputation of being a great talker, and even 

 admitted to me that such was the case. I can only say that 

 he regaled me with all kinds of Wonderful tales until mid- 

 night, when I dropped off to sleep in the middle of one of 

 his anecdotes. The next morning, when I awoke and turned 

 over in my bunk at 5 a.m., the first thing I was conscious of 

 was the fact that my host was still walking round the room 

 and talking just as I last saw him at midnight. Whether or 

 no he had been doing this all night I never could make out, 

 nor did I ask him. Burns informed me that a few days 

 previously an expedition sent out by the New York Museum, 

 and headed by Mr. A. J. Stone, had stayed one night at his 

 house, having come across the Peninsula from Port Moller 

 Bay on the Bering Sea, where they had been hunting bear 

 for a few weeks, and had brought back one small brown bear 

 cub alive, and the skins of ten others which they had killed. 

 This decided me to carry out my original plan, which I had 

 resolved on earlier in the season, namely, to cross to the 

 Bering Sea. Time was now very limited, as I was obliged 

 to be back at Sand Point by July 17 to catch the steamer 

 Newport, v^hich. travelled once a month back to the Cook's Inlet 

 country, which I wanted to reach during August. We had 

 been told wondrous tales of the number of bears on certain 

 rivers, and around one lake in particular on the Bering Sea 



