DASTARDLY ATTACKS 
259 
and some of the cs clever 59 ones, of course, could 
account for it at once, saying : “ The dogs saw or 
smelt a bearor, Ate something that disagreed 
with themor, “ Something stung them.” There 
was nothing for them to eat or to be stung by in 
such a spot; and had the place even been one where 
it was possible that a bear could have been con¬ 
cealed, I am sure it would not have affected my dog 
the way it did, because she had been with me when 
I had shot bears, and showed no such fear. Any¬ 
how, the place was so open and bare for a consider¬ 
able distance around that nothing of even the size 
of a fox could have escaped notice. Had my own 
dog only been in question, I should have thought 
no more of it, and have concluded something had 
gone wrong with her, although she had hitherto 
always been healthy. She did not get rid of her 
nervousness for several days, and was never the 
same as before. She ultimately died in an epileptic 
fit on my return to Yokohama. This incident may 
be of interest to Mr. Stead and others engaged in 
psychological research, who may be inclined to con¬ 
nect it with the man who died and lay so long 
unburied on this spot. I have often wondered since, 
in view of the extraordinary preservation of the 
body, whether he may not have been in a state of 
trance. 
In hunting the sea-otter, as in all other pursuits 
of a like nature, incidents of an extraordinary 
character sometimes occur which may be worth 
recording, A few such I now call to mind. One 
season, while hunting off the Kamchatkan coast, I 
killed an otter by a truly marvellous shot. The day 
was an ideal one for hunting ; a dead calm prevailed, 
