Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/421

Rh, twice snapped asunder. To Mr. Dease and myself, who walked across the country, each in his own direction, the severe weather was rather advantageous than otherwise, as the swamps were frozen, and the snow on the hills was not yet sufficiently deep to impede our progress much.

The day we left the Bloody Fall, while still together, we gave chase to a huge grizzly bear, that terror of the Indians. Bruin, with his shuffling gait, proved too nimble for us, and four shots were fired after him without effect. We followed up his track for some distance, thinking he was wounded, but in vain: his footprints in the snow measured fifteen inches by six! The monster had been amusing himself with digging up marmots and lemmings; the deep forrows in the frozen ground, and the large stones removed, bearing witness to his prodigious strength.

All the birds of passage had fled; the only species that remained being ravens, owlets, snow buntlings, and partridges, now white. There were few deer near the coast; but among the Copper Mountains, which I crossed on the 20th, the bucks and does were congregating in great numbers. That evening we reached the point where our over-land journey to Great Bear Lake was to commence. Here our remaining boat, our