Petropaulouski; and stories of numerous bear conflicts, that had
recently occurred in the neighbourhood, were rife in the village; while
the number of fresh skies every day brought in by the Kurilski hunters,
showed that bears could not be otherwise than plentiful in the country
adjacent.

Guided by one of these hunters, our party set forth upon a search. The
snow still covered the ground; and, of course, they travelled in
sledges--each having one to himself, drawn by five dogs, as is the
custom of the country. The dogs are harnessed two and two abreast, with
the odd one in front. Each has his collar of bearskin, with a leather
thong for a trace; and five of them are sufficient to draw the little
sledge with a man in it. The sledge, called _saunka_, is less than four
feet long; and, being made of the lightest birch wood, is of very little
weight.

A curved stick, called the _oschtol_--with an iron point, and little
bells at the other end--is used to direct the dogs; and, urged on by
this and by well-known exclamations of their driver, they will go at a
speed of many miles an hour.

In this slight vehicle, hills, valleys, lakes, and rivers are crossed,
without such a thing as a road being thought of; and when the dogs are
good, and have been well cared for, an immense distance may be passed
over in a day.

In less than an hour after their departure from Petropaulouski, our
hunters had entered amid the wildest scenery--where not the slightest
sign of either cultivation or human habitation was to be seen, and where
at any moment they might expect to come in sight of their great game.

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE.

DOG-DRIVING.

The guide was conducting them to a stream that ran into the bay some ten
or twelve miles from the "ostrog." On that stream, he said, they would
be pretty certain to find a bear, if not several: since at a place he
knew of the water was not frozen, and the bears might be there trying to
catch fish. When questioned as to why this particular stream was not
frozen like the others, he said that some distance up it there were warm
springs--a phenomenon of frequent occurrence in the peninsula of
Kamschatka--that these springs supplied most of the water of the stream;
and that for several hundred yards below where they gushed forth, the
river was kept open by their warmth during the severest winters. Not
throughout its whole course, however. Farther down, where the water
became cool, it froze