ore shots, and it was at this moment that I joined him. The
bear was down, but trying hard to get upon his feet, and evidently in an
angry mood, so I ran up close and gave him another shot, which again
knocked him over.

Now for the first time I had a good view of the bear, which proved to be
a very large one. As my men declared that this was one of the largest
they had ever seen, I think we may safely place it as a fair example of
the Kadiak species. Unfortunately I had no scales with me, and could
not, therefore, take its weight; but the three of us were unable to
budge either end from the ground, and after removing the pelt the
carcass appeared to be as large as a fair sized ox. We had much
difficulty in skinning him, for he fell on his face, and it took us some
half hour even to turn him over; we were only able to do this by using
his legs as levers. It required over two hours to remove the pelt.
Then we had tea and shot the bear all over again many times, as we sat
chatting before the fire.

It seemed that at the time when I had first caught sight of this bear,
Nikolai had just located the bear which we had originally seen and were
following, and it was a great piece of luck my taking this snap shot,
for the other bear was much smaller.

We took the skin and skull with us, while I made arrangements with my
natives to return some months later and collect all the bones, for I
decided to present the entire skeleton to the National Museum.

It was six o'clock when we again made a start. I had a deep sense of
satisfaction as I lay lazily back in the baidarka with the large skin at
my feet, only occasionally taking the paddle, for it had been a hard
trip, and I felt unlike exerting myself. We camped that night in a
hunting barabara which belonged to Nikolai, and was most picturesquely
situated on a small island.

My natives were extremely fond of bear meat, and they sat long into the
night gorging themselves. Each one would dig into the kettle with his
fork, and bringing out a big chunk would crowd as much as possible into
his mouth, and holding it there with his teeth would cut off with his
hunting knife a liberal portion, which he would swallow after a munch or
two.

I had tried to eat Kadiak bear before, but it has rather a bitter taste,
and this one was too tough to be appetizing. The flesh of the bears
which we had killed on the Alaska Peninsula was excellent and without
this strong gamy flavor.[5]

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