90 BEARS

his foot in a root, came down with a crash on his face,
and, being a very heavy weight, the fall gave him such a
shock that he could not get up. He told me afterwards
that as he lay there he exclaimed, ‘‘ Well, Pll be hanged
if after hunting grizzly for four years without any luck,
here is one hunting me, and he is going to get me at his
very first attempt.” However, my friend lived to tell
the tale, as, when the bear was within a few feet of him,
it suddenly turned off to one side and disappeared in the
woods. It is plain that it was pure accident that the
bear had run after him, and that, having heard their
voices, it had run the way it was headed, but as soon
as it got close enough to sniff the human scent, had dis-
covered its mistake.

In 1924, when up in the Cassiar district, I also was
regaled with another most amusing account of a harrowing
adventure with a grizzly. The man who was the hero,
or rather one of them, for there were two together at the
time, was what we call out here an absolute ‘‘ tender-
foot ’’—that is, lacking in experience in the wilds. He
had rashly undertaken to travel from Vancouver to
Dawson on foot, with one pony to carry his outfit. If
my pack-train had not made a very plain trail for him
to follow his bones would be lying out there still, as he
had been lost for five days in a lately burnt area, and
both he and his unfortunate pony were nearly done for
when they arrived at my camp. It seems he had left
Vancouver early in April, and had been steadily on the
go until he met me in October. He had then not covered
much more than half the distance. The tales he had
to tell of his adventures in that time would have been
sufficient to fill several books—he had two or three large
note-books filled up with them. Every evening he would
remember something he had not told before. What
struck him most particularly about the country was the
number of small creeks. ‘‘ I never would have believed
that there could be so many creeks in a country,” he
said, ‘* You may hardly believe it, but on one day alone
I counted sixty-four creeks that I had to cross, and they

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