Our rifle and camera batteries were as follows: 

Merriam had a.45-70 and a.50-110 Winchester, both shooting half-jacketed bullets.  My rifles were a.30-40 Winchester, a double .577, and a double .40-93-400, kindly lent me by Mr. S.D.  Warren, of Boston, and on which I relied.  Besides the pocket cameras and a small Goerz, I carried one camera with double lenses of 17-1/2-inch focus, and one with single lense of 30-inch focus.  The last two were, of course, intended for animals at long range.

Hoping to prove something in regard to the weight of the Kadiak bear, I brought a pair of Fairbanks spring scales, weighing up to 300 pounds, and some water-tight canvas bags for weighing blood and the viscera.

We selected two good men as hunters for the trip, Vacille and Klampe.

On the second day out from Wood Island a storm came on, and though the Maksoutoff was staunch, we could not hold for our port, owing to the exposed coast, where squalls come sweeping without warning from the mountain tops, driving the snow down like smoke, the so-called “wollies.”  It was wild and wintry enough when we turned into the sheltered protection of Steragowan Harbor.

A few mallards and a goose were here added to the ship’s store next morning from the flats, and the weather clearing, we made Kaguiac, and found our sloop in good condition.  In addition we took along an otter boat, a large rowboat, from here, as our baidarkas proved rather unseaworthy.  Besides Mr. Heitman, the fur company’s man, there was one other white settler in Kaguiac named Walch, who came to Kadiak twenty-seven years ago at the time of the first American military occupation, and though he had served in many an exciting battle in the Civil War, the Kadiak calm appealed to him.  He married, settled down among the natives contentedly, and has never moved since.  This, curiously, is the case of many men who come to the North, after leading wandering and adventurous lives.

Unfavorable winds at Kaguiac delayed our sailing, so we passed the time in excursions after ptarmigans and mallards.  We also secured here another native, a strong, willing worker, who knew the coast.

The weather cleared suddenly, the wind shifting from northeast to northwest, and enabled us to make a run to our first good hunting ground in Windy Bay, a large piece of water five miles long by three wide, and surrounded by rock mountains covered with snow, the only bare ground to be seen at this time being on the low foothills, and in the sunny ravines.  We made ourselves at home at the only good anchorage in a small cove with high crags on two sides and a ravine running off toward the east.

The following morning—­April 28—­opened bright and calm, and we were soon viewing the snow slopes with our glasses.  Ivan, the new man, was the first to call our attention to a streak on a distant mountain side, and although perhaps 2-1/2 miles away, we could make out, even with the naked eye, a deep furrow in the snow running down diagonally into the valley below, undoubtedly a bear road.  I took a five-cent piece from my pocket, tossed for choice of shot, and lost to Merriam.