It was just in such a spring that our young hunters had arrived at Petropaulouski; and stories of numerous bear conflicts, that had recently occurred in the neighbourhood, were rife in the village; while the number of fresh skies every day brought in by the Kurilski hunters, showed that bears could not be otherwise than plentiful in the country adjacent.
Guided by one of these hunters, our party set forth upon a search. The snow still covered the ground; and, of course, they travelled in sledges—each having one to himself, drawn by five dogs, as is the custom of the country. The dogs are harnessed two and two abreast, with the odd one in front. Each has his collar of bearskin, with a leather thong for a trace; and five of them are sufficient to draw the little sledge with a man in it. The sledge, called saunka, is less than four feet long; and, being made of the lightest birch wood, is of very little weight.
A curved stick, called the oschtol—with an iron point, and little bells at the other end—is used to direct the dogs; and, urged on by this and by well-known exclamations of their driver, they will go at a speed of many miles an hour.
In this slight vehicle, hills, valleys, lakes, and rivers are crossed, without such a thing as a road being thought of; and when the dogs are good, and have been well cared for, an immense distance may be passed over in a day.
In less than an hour after their departure from Petropaulouski, our hunters had entered amid the wildest scenery—where not the slightest sign of either cultivation or human habitation was to be seen, and where at any moment they might expect to come in sight of their great game.
Chapter Fifty Three.
Dog-Driving.
The guide was conducting them to a stream that ran into the bay some ten or twelve miles from the “ostrog.” On that stream, he said, they would be pretty certain to find a bear, if not several: since at a place he knew of the water was not frozen, and the bears might be there trying to catch fish. When questioned as to why this particular stream was not frozen like the others, he said that some distance up it there were warm springs—a phenomenon of frequent occurrence in the peninsula of Kamschatka—that these springs supplied most of the water of the stream; and that for several hundred yards below where they gushed forth, the river was kept open by their warmth during the severest winters. Not throughout its whole course, however. Farther down, where the water became cool, it froze like in other streams; and that this was the case, was evident to our hunters, who had entered the mouth of the rivers from the icy surface of the bay, and were gliding in their sledges up its frozen channel.