may find a white crow almost as readily.

Bears are abundant, but their skins are not articles of export. The
beasts are brown or black, and grow to a disagreeable size. Bear
hunting is an amusement of the country, very pleasant and exciting
until the bear turns and becomes the hunter. Then there is no fun in
it, if he succeeds in his pursuit. A gentleman in Kamchatka gave me a
bearskin more than six feet long, and declared that it was not
unusually large. 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