"The snow was about a foot deep at Kushiro, but increased in depth as we approached the mountains, where it varied from three to five feet. It took us three days to reach the hunting-grounds. After we left the river the road was very uncomfortable. As long as we kept to the centre, progress was good, but whenever the sleigh happened to go one foot too far either side, over we went,—driver, horse, passengers, baggage! Spills of this kind were frequent, and relieved the monotony of the journey. We spent two nights at inns in lumber-towns on the way.
"We had telegraphed ahead to the last town, Teshikaga, and a courier was dispatched to collect the Ainu beaters, who were waiting our arrival. There we held a council of war with the warden of the Imperial forests—the dwelling-place of His Majesty's ursine subjects.
"We also tried out our snowshoes, oval frames of mulberry wood, without which locomotion was impossible. There was not time to make perfect fits, so we had to make the best of ready-made ones, all of which were baffled by the Major's avoirdupois.
"An interesting bird had been shot at this camp the day before our arrival; it has no name, but is known as 'the bird which appears only every six years,' and is distinguished by having its legs above its tail-feathers, so that when it waddles on dry land, if it ever does waddle, its tail forms the head of the procession. It is probably related to the penguin, but is different from it in that its beak is long and straight like a crane's. Strange to say, on our return to Kushiro by river a week later Mr. Fenner shot another of the same species, and with the waters of the Kushiro we christened the fowl Avis rara Fenneri!
"On the day after our arrival we continued our journey by sleigh to the shores of Lake Kutchare, which is in the heart of an uninhabited forest and has a circumference of over twenty-five miles. Here we separated into two parties—the Major and Fenner, Keyser and myself. Across the frozen surface of the lake rose the ghost-like summit of Mount Shari.
"'Bears, bears!' whispered the Ainus, pointing to the peak with their hairy fingers.
"After dining on salt salmon, corned beef and hard-tack, we put on our snowshoes and set out across the lake, accompanied by the aborigines carrying our baggage. Keyser and I, the 'lean detachment,' struck for the higher spurs of the mountain, while the Major and Fenner, the 'fat brigade,' fixed their gaze on the lower slopes.
"Keyser and I—hereafter designated simply as 'we'—reached the foot of the mountain as night set in, and, to our keen disappointment, found a dilapidated hut made of pine boughs; we had yearned to spread our skin-lined sleeping-bags under the starry heavens. (As it turned out, however, the roof of the hut was sufficiently starry, for the night was spent in receiving falling lumps of melting snow.) With the remnants of the walls we built two fires, one for the wild men, and the other for ourselves; while I boiled the coffee and the mush, Keyser fried the bacon and the spuds. For dessert we had raisins and chocolate.
"The rest of the evening we spent in council of war with our braves. With our clothes on, our guns by our sides, and our Colt six-shooters in our bags, we resigned ourselves to dreams of the morrow's chase, while the Ainus spread themselves around us like the crust on a pumpkin pie. The fires soon died out, and we were awakened about four in the morning by the murmurs of frozen feet, and passed the remaining wee small hours struggling between romantic sentiments and cold—very cold—facts. At half-past five the hairy men relighted the fires, and at six I jumped from my bag like a dum-dum from an automatic; I set the mush and coffee to boiling, and was soon followed by Keyser with the spuds and bacon.
"We decided not to wash for three days, for a bath is inconvenient with all your clothes on, and the Ainus considered it bad luck anyway. At seven we put on our snowshoes, and armed with a can of pork and beans, a biscuit, a flask of brandy, a kodak, a Winchester high power self-loading rifle, and a Colt six-shooter, we set out with one guide and one packman each.