Ye who listen with credulity to the stories of hunters, and pursue with eagerness the traces of bears; who expect that courage will rise with the emergency and that the deficiencies of bravery will be supplied by the tightness of the fix, attend to the history of Rasselas, an inexperienced bear-slayer. About noon, as we were making our way along the edge of a narrow grassy valley, bordered by a dense forest of birch, larch, and pine, one of our drivers suddenly raised the cry of _medveid_, and pointed eagerly down the valley to a large black bear rambling carelessly through the long grass in search of blueberries, and approaching gradually nearer and nearer to our side of the ravine. He evidently had not yet seen us, and a party to attack him was soon made up of two Kamchadals, the Major, and myself, all armed to the teeth with rifles, axes, revolvers, and knives. Creeping cautiously around through the timber, we succeeded in gaining unobserved a favourable position at the edge of the woods directly in front of his Bruinic majesty, and calmly awaited his approach. Intent upon making a meal of blueberries, and entirely unconscious of his impending fate, he waddled slowly and awkwardly up to within fifty yards. The Karnchadals kneeled down, threw forward their long heavy rifles, fixed their sharp-pronged rests firmly in the ground, crossed themselves devoutly three times, drew a long breath, took a deadly and deliberate aim, shut their eyes, and fired. The silence was broken by a long fizzle, during which the Kamchadals conscientiously kept their eyes shut, and finally a terrific bang announced the catastrophe, followed immediately by two more sharp reports from the rifles of the Major and myself. As the smoke cleared away I looked eagerly to see the brute kicking around in the agonies of death; but what was my amazement to find that instead of kicking around in the agonies of death, as a beast with any sense of propriety _would_ after such a fusillade, the perverse animal was making directly for us at a gallop! Here was a variation introduced that was not down in the programme! We had made no calculations upon a counter-attack, and the ferocity of his appearance, as he came tearing through the bushes, left no room for doubt as to the seriousness of his intentions. I tried to think of some historic precedent which would justify me in climbing a tree; but my mind was in a state of such agitation that I could not avail myself of my extensive historical knowledge. "A man may know the seven portions of the Koran by heart, but when a bear gets after him he will not be able to remember his alphabet!" What we should have done in the last extremity will never be known. A shot from the Major's revolver seemed to alter the bear's original plan of operations, and, swerving suddenly to one side, he crashed through the bushes ten feet from the muzzles of our empty rifles, and disappeared in the forest. A careful