Sometimes instead of a single road we have a double one, the bear using one path for the legs of each side of his body. Again, on soft mossy side hills, instead of paths we find single footprints which have been used over and over, and made into huge saucers, it being the custom of the bear to take long strides on the side hills, and to step into the impressions made by other animals which had traveled ahead of it.
The red salmon were beginning to run, and some fishermen in another part of the bay supplied us, from time to time, from their nets. Especially good were the salmon heads roasted.
Bear sign failed, and Afognak Island, where Vacille shot and trapped, had been so much talked about, that I determined to see it for myself, and with a good wind we rowed across the straits and sailed twelve miles into the island by Kofikoski Bay.
[Illustration: BEAR PATHS, KODIAK ISLAND.]
Scattered along up the bay were small islands, and these furnished us with a good supply of gulls' eggs, which lasted many days.
The Afognak coast is heavily wooded with spruce, while a large plateau in the interior is almost barren, and gave good opportunity for using the glasses.
During several days at the head of Kofikoski Bay nothing was seen, so we packed up and crossed a large piece of the island by portages and a chain of lakes, where our Osgood boat was indispensable. The country crossed was like a beautiful park of meadows, groves and lakes, and one could scarcely believe it was uncultivated.
The Red Salmon River of Seal Harbor, to which we were headed, could not fail us, for bear could scoop out the salmon in armfuls below the lower falls, so Vacille said, and he was honest, and now as keen as anything while traveling his own hunting grounds.
For a whole week a northeast storm blew directly toward the bay, and kept us in camp. It was fishing weather, however, and my fly-rod, with a Parmachenee belle, kept us well supplied with steelheads and speckled trout, which were plentiful in the clear waters of a wandering trout brook running through a meadow below the camp.
A calm evening came finally, and we paddled down the last lake, some three miles, to the famous pool.