rge. I am very glad there was no live bear in it when it
came into my possession.

There is a story of a man in California who followed the track of a
grizzly bear a day and a half. He abandoned it because, as he
explained, "it was getting a little too fresh."

One day, about two years before my visit, a cow suddenly entered
Petropavlovsk with a live bear on her back. The bear escaped unhurt,
leaving the cow pretty well scratched. After that event she preferred
to graze in or near the town, and never brought home another bear.

[Illustration: COW AND BEAR.]

Kamchatka without dogs would be like Hamlet without Hamlet. While
crossing the Pacific my _compagnons du voyage_ made many suggestions
touching my first experience in Kamchatka. "You won't sleep any the
first night in port. The dogs will howl you out of your seven senses."
This was the frequent remark of the engineer, corroborated by others.
On arriving, we were disappointed to find less than a hundred dogs at
Petropavlovsk, as the rest of the canines belonging there were
spending vacation in the country. About fifteen hundred were owned in
the town.

Very few Kamchadale dogs can bark, but they will howl oftener, longer,
and louder than any 'yaller dog' that ever went to a cur pound or
became sausage meat. The few in Petropavlovsk made much of their
ability, and were especially vocal at sunset, near their feeding time.
Occasionally during the night they try their throats and keep up a
hailing and answering chorus, calculated to draw a great many oaths
from profane strangers.

In 1865 Colonel Bulkley carried one of these animals to California.
The dog lifted up his voice on the waters very often, and received a
great deal of rope's ending in consequence. At San Francisco Mr.
Covert took him home, and attempted his domestication. 'Norcum,' (for
that was the brute's name,) created an enmity between Covert and all
who lived within hearing distance, and many were the threats of
canicide. Covert used to rise two or three times every night and
argue, with a club, to induce Norcum to be silent. While I was at San
Francisco, Mr. Mumford, one of the Telegraph Company's directors,
conceived a fondness for the dog, and took him to the Occidental
Hotel.

On the first day of his hotel life we tied Norcum on the balcony in
front of Mumford's room, about forty feet from the ground. Scarcely
had we gone to dinner when he jumped from the balcony and hung by his
chain, with