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104 THE GRIZZLY BEAR

You not only obtain far better sport but the pelts are in
the pink of condition. It is not a game for the soft city
men who desire slaughter without exertion or hardship.
The places that it is advisable to visit are not often so
accessible that you can take in an array of tents and
stoves and piles of luxuries. Then, you are apt to have
some bad weather, and perhaps soft wet snow to struggle
through, or you may have to ascend a swift river for
several days in a canoe. Canoeing sounds nice pleasant
work, and so it is in summer on a lake or sluggish stream,
but just try one of our cataracts in early spring and you
will change your mind somewhat. It is seldom that
paddles can be used, and you struggle and strive with
poles or tow with ropes, in the water half the time, wet
to the skin anyway from splashing and perspiration,
until you are half dead from fatigue. Perhaps, too,
rain is falling in torrents to add to your miseries. But I
have wandered away from my subject.

On certain mountains there are what we call “ slides.”
They are places that have been swept clear of timber
by avalanches, or as they are called out here, “‘ snow
slides”? Some of these “slides”? have been cleaned off
right down to the bare rock and are then useless ; others
have had an accumulation of debris left on them on
which grow certain kinds of vegetation, such as grass,
wild onions, Indian potatoes, lilies, and a number of other
plants whose names I do not know. As soon as spring
comes a few days of warm sun melts the snow on these
slides and a growth starts. Elsewhere the timber shades
the snow from the sun, and in consequence there is usually
a growth on the slides before there is growth anywhere
else, and therefore to them the bears go for food. But
there is a lot to know about “ slides,” as a large percentage
of them are no good. Some are, as I said before, too
rocky; others too old and have become overgrown with
a dense thicket of alders and other bush in which it is
impossible to see a bear; yet again, others have so much
snow on them that, by the time vegetation has sprung
up, the weather has been warm so long that the hides