In skin canoes (baidarkas) the Aleuts, paddling along the shore, keep a sharp lookout on the nearby hillsides, where the bears feed upon the young and tender grass.

Nikolai Pycoon, my other native, was younger and shorter in stature, and had also a great reputation as a hunter, which later I found was fully justified, and furthermore was considered the best baidarka man of Afognak.

The morning after reaching our shooting grounds I started with one of my natives and the local hunter in the baidarka to get the lay of the land.

On May 15, by 4 o'clock, I had finished a hurried breakfast, and with my two Aleuts had left in the baidarka for our daily watching place.

The schooner landed us with our natives, two baidarkas, and all our provisions, near the mouth of the harbor.

The two baidarkas kept side by side, and Blake and I chatted together, but all the while kept the glasses constantly fixed upon the hillsides.

About mid-day we went on shore, lunched, and then basked in the sun until the afternoon, when we again got into the baidarkas and paddled further up the bay to a place where a wide meadow extends out from the base of the mountains.

A bad surf breaking on the beach prevented our going further up the bay in our baidarkas, as we had planned to do.

Here we left the baidarkas and crossed a large meadow without sighting bear.

We made a most exciting approach in our baidarkas, winding in and out, across the open, up a small lagoon which cut into the meadow where the bears were feeding.

It was after five next morning when we left in our two baidarkas for the extreme head of the bay, where there was another vast meadow.

We carried the entire carcass to the baidarka, and even the cartridge shells were taken away, to avoid tainting the place with an unusual scent.

On June 23 we turned our baidarkas' bows to the upper bay, at the head of which we ascended a small river that wound through a vast meadow until the stream met the mountains.

After breakfast, as they were still In the same place, we attempted the stalk, going most of the way in our baidarkas, winding in and out through the meadow in the small lagoons which intersected it in all directions.

[Illustration: BAIDARKA.]

It was a beautiful sight, this fleet of twenty odd baidarkas, the paddles all rising and falling in perfect time, and changing sides without a break.

At midnight we again stopped for tea, and while we sat by the fire the host of baidarkas of the sea otter party silently glided by like shadows.

Some miles from Afognak the baidarkas drew up side by side in a long, even line, our baidarka joining in.

When all the straggling baidarkas had caught up and taken their places in the line, the chief gave the word Kedar ("Come on"), and we all paddled forward, and just as the sun was rising above the hills we reached our journey's end.

I speak of the latter because a native will often carry his wife, children, and dog inside a one-hatch baidarka while he paddles.

Each schooner carries thirty or forty baidarkas and twice as many men.

On a favorable morning the baidarkas leave the schooners, and, holding their direction so as to describe a large fan, can view a good piece of water.

We added to our equipment two native baidarkas for hunting and a bear dog belonging to an old Russian hunter, Walter Matroken.

In addition we took along an otter boat, a large rowboat, from here, as our baidarkas proved rather unseaworthy.

They get up at daylight, and two men in a baidarka patrol both sides of a big bay, watching carefully for bear tracks on the mountain sides, as this is the surest indication of their presence.