ow slope, the shikari told the much disgusted Jane that
she must wait there, the rest of the climb being too hard for her, and, in
truth, it was pretty bad. Up a very steep gully filled with loose stones
and rotten snow, scrambling, and often hauling ourselves up with our hands
by means of roots and trailing branches, we slowly worked our way up a
place I would never have even attempted in cold blood.

Twenty minutes' severe exertion brought us to a shelf, or rather slope, of
rock on the right, sparsely covered with wiry brown grass from which the
snow had but very recently gone, and crowned by a crest of stunted pines.
Up this we wriggled, I being mainly towed up by my shikari's cummerbund,
and, lying under a pine, we peered over the top.

A steep gully divided us from a rough ridge, upon a grassy ledge of which,
about 200 yards off, a big black beast was grubbing and rooting about.

The shikari, shaking with excitement, handed me the rifle, urging me to
shoot. I did nothing of the sort, having no breath, and my hand being
unsteady from a fast and stiff climb.

I regret to be obliged to admit that, not realising that it would be
little short of miraculous to kill a bear stone-dead at 200 yards with a
Mannlicher, and being also, naturally, somewhat carried away by the sight
of a real bear within possible distance, I waited until I was perfectly
steady, and fired. The brute fell over, but immediately picked himself up
again and made off. I saw I had broken his fore-shoulder and fired again
as he disappeared over the far side of the ledge, but missed, and I saw
that bear no more.

We had the utmost difficulty in crossing the precipitous gully to a spot
below the ledge upon which the beast had been feeding--the ledge itself we
could not reach at all; and the lateness of the hour and the difficulty of
the country in which we were, prevented us from trying to enter the next
ravine and work up and back by the way the bear had gone. A neck-breaking
crawl down a horrible grass slope brought us to better ground, and I sadly
joined Jane to be well and deservedly scolded for firing a foolish shot.
The lady was very much disgusted at having been defrauded of the sight of
a bear "quite wild," as she expressed it--a certain short-tempered animal
which had eaten up her best umbrella in the Zoo at Dusseldorf not having
fulfilled the necessary condition of wildness.

Next day I sent out coolies to search for traces, promising lavish