easily approach, provided that the wind is right and he keeps quiet;
but if the bear hears the slightest sound or catches a single whiff of
scent--away he goes! If, however, the hunter approaches in an open
place and the bear, seeing him, sits up to get a better look, the
hunter should immediately stand perfectly still, and wait thus until
the bear again resumes feeding or moves away. Then the hunter rushes
forward, but all the while watches keenly to see when it stops to look
again; and at the first sign of that the hunter becomes rigid once
more. Such tactics may be successful two or three times but rarely
more, so then the hunter had best fire. Now, my son, when you go
hunting you will know what to do, and if Amik would only pay attention
to what I say, he, too, might become a better hunter, for I have had
much experience in hunting both black and grizzly bears."


NEYKIA AND HER LOVER

As the weeks passed, the children devoted themselves to their winter
play and spent most of their days in the open air. Tobogganing was
their greatest sport. Often did they invite me to take part in this,
and whenever, in descending a slope, a sled-load was upset, it always
created hilarious laughter.

The younger children, even during the severest part of the winter when
it registered forty or more degrees below zero, were always kept
comfortably warm, sometimes uncomfortably warm, in the rabbit-skin
coats that their mother and their grandmother had made for them. The
rabbit skins were cut into thin, spiral strips and twisted, with the
hair-side out, about thin thongs, and woven together like a
small-meshed fish-net, so that, though the hair overlapped and filled