While I was having tea in one of the barabaras I heard much shooting outside, which announced the return of a sea otter party that had been hunting for two months at Cape Douglas. It was a beautiful sight, this fleet of twenty odd baidarkas, the paddles all rising and falling in perfect time, and changing sides without a break. There is nothing more graceful than one of these canoes when handled by expert Aleuts. These natives had already come forty miles that day, and were now going to stop only long enough for tea, and then push on to the little settlement of Afognak Place, some twenty-five miles away, where most of them lived. In one of the canoes I saw a small chap of thirteen years. He was the chief's son, and already an expert in hunting and in handling the baidarka. So is the Aleut hunter trained. As it had been a very warm day I feared that the skin might spoil. Therefore I concluded to continue to Afognak Place without camping for the night, and so we paddled on and on. As darkness came, the mountains seemed to rise grander and more majestic from the water on either side of us. At midnight we again stopped for tea, and while we sat by the fire the host of baidarkas of the sea otter party silently glided by like shadows. We joined them, for my men had much to tell of their four months with the white hunter, and many questions were asked on both sides. Some miles from Afognak the baidarkas drew up side by side in a long, even line, our baidarka joining in. _Drasti_ and _Chemi_[6] came to me from all sides, for I had from time to time met most of the native hunters of this island, and they seemed to regard me as quite one of them. [Footnote 6: Russian and Aleut for "How do you do?"] When all the straggling baidarkas had caught up and taken their places in the line, the chief gave the word _Kedar_ ("Come on"), and we all paddled forward, and just as the sun was rising above the hills we reached our journey's end. Two days later my friend joined me. He also had been successful, and had killed a good sized male bear in Little Uganuk Bay on Kadiak Island. Our bear hunt was now over, and we had been fortunate in accomplishing all we had hoped for. IV. THE WHITE SHEEP OF KENAI PENINSULA The last of July Blake and I sailed from the Kadiak Islands, and one week later were landed at the little settlement of Kenai, on the Kenai Peninsula. The mountains of this region are unquestionably the finest big-game shooting grounds in North America at the present day. Here one may expect to find four different kinds of bears--black, two species of brown, and the Alaska grizzly--the largest of moose, and the Kenai form of the white sheep (_Ovis dalli_).