"One day I got back to camp with the boys a good deal earlier than usual, somewhere about four o'clock. We had started very early that morning, I remember, trying to gain a peak somewhat hard of access. It was difficult enough, so difficult in fact, that the trial had to be abandoned that day, as we found it could only be approached from the other side. Of course our arrival sent George, the camp cook, into the most violent kind of a hurry. He mentioned to me, as I remembered later, that he had shot at a Kodiak bear somewhere about noon, and though he had found tracks with blood in them, he did not believe that he had wounded the bear sufficiently to make it worth while to track him. But George was hustling at top speed to get dinner, and no one paid much attention to him, I least of all, for I was trying to figure out the best way to climb that peak next day.
"After dinner, it was still early, and as I was anxious to get a line on the geology of the section, in order to determine how far the volcanic formation of the Wrangell mountains intrudes upon the St. Elias Range, I thought an hour would be well spent in investigating. I was not going far from camp, so, as it chanced, I took nothing with me but my geological hammer. About a mile from camp I found a sharp ravine, and I wanted to see whether the granodiorite, which I could see in the walls of the ravine, extended its whole depth. I scrambled down into the ravine, making observations as I went, until the cleft ended in a sort of dry lake bed, shaped like a deep oval saucer. Steep declivities ran upward from the rim of this depression in every way but two, the ravine down which I had come and a creek bed running to the south. Being desirous of tracing the origin of this unusual configuration, I scrambled to the edge, breaking through a clump of bushes on my way.
Photographs by U.S.G.S.
In the Home of the Kodiak Bear.
The pack-train on its way to the camp, where chief of party narrowly escaped death.
"As I did so, I was startled by a deep and vicious growl which seemed to come from my feet, and before I realized what the cracking of the brushwood meant, the cook's story came back to me, and I broke for the ravine. I was too late! There, in the path down which I had come, his muzzle and paws red with the blood from the deep flesh wounds he had received, and which he had been licking in order to try to assuage the pain, stood an immense Kodiak bear. The Kodiak is not as ferocious as the grizzly, but this beast was maddened by the pain of his wound, and by the suspicion that I had followed to work him further ill. My slight geologic pick was of no avail against the huge brute, my road of escape was cut off, and the bear was advancing, growling angrily. I broke and ran for the rim of the lake, hoping to be able to encircle it and return to the opening of the ravine by which I had entered, and as I ran I heard the bear charge after me.
"At the edge I paused, but there was no path along the former beach, and having no alternative I slid down the debris into the lake bed. Blind with rage the bear followed, and for a moment he seemed to have me at his mercy. A hundred yards further on, however, some slender bushes grew out of the shelving bank and with the bear but a few yards behind I leaped for these. Had I missed my grasp, or had they been torn from their slender rooting the story would have ended right there. But they held, and I reached the level of the old beach, leaving my pursuer momentarily baffled below. I lost no time in reaching the ravine, and I think I pretty nearly hold the speed record in Alaska for that half-mile back to camp."