soldiers, who were in the habit of giving one another fictitious names, such as the names of animals, birds, trees, &c. had dubbed him Elg or Elk, by which alone he was now known all over the country. He had been one of twelve children; but the whole family but himself were dead -father and mother, and all. He was about thirty-five years of age, short in person, stout and robust, and able to undergo great fatigue, though Mr Lloyd, on one bear hunt, which lasted for weeks, fairly knocked him up. He excelled in the use of the rifle, and was admirable upon the skidor. When only twelve years of age, he and his brother engaged at midnight an enormous bear, who was disturbing his father's cattle, and had helped himself to a goat. It made its escape; but next day Elk, in company with two grown-up brothers, attacked him, and slew him after a dangerous combat, in which the boy behaved with great bravery, and one of his brothers was badly wounded. When in his fourteenth year, he distinguished himself by pursuing with a dog-a mere cur -a huge bear, that had made a dash at the cattle. He soon came upon him at about twenty paces distance, on the opposite side of a little ravine, and taking aim at the monster, whose attention was occupied by the cur, with a gun, a mere plaything, only two feet long, and of which the cock was so defective that he was obliged to hold it back with his hand, he fired at the breast of the bear, and shot the animal through the heart. Often afterwards, when a man, he had desperate encounters; and one of them is thus narrated : "In the afternoon of the same day, and when Elg was alone, in a very wild part of the country, covered with much fallen timber and immense fragments of stone, he suddenly came upon the track of a bear; the next minute, and within a short distance from where he stood, he discovered in the cleft of a great mass of rocks, the den of the animal. "As he had no confidence, however, (according to his own account,) in the lock of his rifle, he did not care to go immediately up to the den; he therefore mounted a pretty high stone, immediately overlooking it, at about fifteen paces distant. "From this position he discovered the VOL. XXVIII. NO. CLXVIII. bear lying fast asleep near to the entrance of the den; and as he got sight of her ear, under which (supposing the side of the animal's head to have been towards him, as he imagined was the case) is one of the most fatal of places, he lost no time in levelling and discharging his rifle. "For a moment after he had fired, the bear lay still; and in consequence, Elg almost imagined she (for it was a female) was killed; had he thought otherwise, he would have had ample time to get out of her way; presently, however, the bear raised herself up, when, fixing her eyes steadily upon him, and uttering at the same time a terrific growl, she dashed at him (to use his own expression)' with the rapidity of a bullet out of a gun,' and was close upon him in almost the twinkling of an eye. "Very fortunately for Elg, the stone on which he was standing was situated on a declivity, the after part of it being some five or six feet from the ground; down this, in his hurry to escape, he tumbled all but headlong; it was well he did so, for the bear, followed by two of her cubs, which were more than half as large as herself, almost at the same instant made her spring, and passed clean and far over him. "In this situation, Elg lay for a short while, frightened, as he said, almost out of his senses; when finding all quiet, and supposing, as was the case, that the bears, from not seeing him, had taken themselves off to another part of the forest, he ventured to get up, and to reconnoitre the den; he then discovered, that besides the three which had made a leaping-bar of his person, a fourth had taken an opposite direction. "Though all four bears for this time made their escape, yet in the course of the eight or ten succeeding weeks, Elg, with the assistance of several other peasants, managed to kill the whole of them. "On taking the skin from the old bear, which he described to have been of a very large size, he found the ball which he had first fired at her, flattened out, and set fast on the back part of her skull. By this, it would appear that he had mistaken the position in which she was lying, so that, instead of aiming at the root of her ear, as he imagined was the case, he had fired at her length-wise." But from the silent, solitary, and sedentary bear non-shooting on the gäll, let us turn to the noisy, companionable, and rousing bear-shooting on the skidor, or snow-skates. The skidor, in the parts of Scandinavia of which Mr Lloyd speaks, for the left B foot, was usually from nine to eleven, or even twelve feet in length, for the right, six or seven, the inequality enabling a person to wheel about with greater facility, and, in broken or bad ground, to lean the whole of his weight, if necessary, on the shorter skate, which was constructed of stronger materials. The breadth of these skidor is between two and three inches, and the foot is fixed with leather straps about the middle of the length, the points being considerably turned up to avoid all impediments. A pair may weigh from ten to fifteen pounds. In very mountainous districts, the under part of the skidor is covered with seal-skin, to prevent a retrograde movement in ascending steep acclivities. In running, they are never lifted from the ground, but the motion is a glide, something similar to that of our own skates. The skater carries, frequently, a stick in each hand, to impel or retard his progress, his rifle being swung across his shoulders. On pretty level ground, it is easy to run on skidor; but, in a deeply-wooded and mountainous country, thickly studded with fragments of rocks, prostrate trees, &c. like the Dalecarlian and Wermeland forests, it requires immense practice. During Mr Lloyd's noviciate, he used to sustain two or three hundred tumbles in the course of a day, and occasionally to come with such violence against trees, as to think he should be dashed to pieces, or the trees uprooted. Ere long he became a decent skater, and supposes he could go fifty miles, over tolerable ground, considerably under the twelve hours. He was astonished with the skill and address of some of the first runners in Scandinavia whom he saw on the descent of a lofty and precipitous hill, going at an immense pace, at times stooping nearly double, to avoid the overhanging branches, at others, swerving their bodies to save their guns from the trees, and at almost every instant, shifting their legs so as to avoid rocks, stones, and other obstacles. He believes that men might be found who could perform fifty miles in seven or eight hours, and not impossibly a hundred miles in double that space of time. But over bad ground, when the snow is loose, the pace is but slow, the skidor Intelligence having been received by Mr Lloyd, that a large bear was safely ringed at Aspberg, a Finnish settlement, about ninety miles to the north-west of his quarters in Lappcottage, (to which he had now removed,) he set off on a sledge to shoot him; and after many difficulties, and a bivouac, picturesquely described, in the forest, he reached the village or hamlet of some dozen families, situated near the summit of a hill of con. siderable elevation. The country all around is mountainous, and deeply covered with pine forests-the scenery of a bold and picturesque character. The village is thirty-five miles from the parish church, and, owing to the wretched roads, a journey to and from their place of worship not unfrequently occupies a week. Here the peasantry excel in the use of skidor. Indeed, for many months in the year, they have no other means of communicating with their neighbours, or of carrying on their necessary avocations in the forest. Like many other Finnish settlements in the northern forests, they have their skidor-backe, or skidor-hill. On Sunday afternoon, or other holidays, the people, both young and old, male and female, congregate in considerable numbers to amuse themselves with sliding down the steep. Children of a very tender age join in the amusement, and thus early become proficients in the art. The Aspberg bear baffled his pursuers the first day, but on the afternoon of the second, he fell. Mr Lloyd had pursued him on skidor for eleven hours, and fired the fatal shots. A few days afterwards, our author, in company with the Elk and other two followers, resumed their quest, and the result is thus spiritedly described : "The spot where he was challenging was a small opening in the thicket. There, however, nothing was to be seen but a little aperture of less than a foot in diameter, in the surface of the snow, which was perfectly level, and near to which he stood, furiously baying. This I, of course, in stantly knew to be Bruin's lair, and I was also very certain, from the manner of the dogs-for Paijas had now come up that he was within it. Not caring to waste time, therefore, and having confidence in my gun, which was loose in my hand, I at once ran my skidor, one on each side of the hole. "On looking down this pit,-the snow on every side being nearer five than four feet in depth,-I espied the bear very snugly coiled up at the bottom. By this time, the animal had partly awakened from his nap, which had probably been of many months' continuance, and was beginning to move his head about, as if at a loss to know what was going forward. I now pointed my rifle downwards be tween my legs, it being then in a perpendicular direction, and pulled the trigger; but, instead of splitting his skull, as I fully anticipated would have been the case, the piece, as ill luck would have it, missed fire. This must either have been owing to the snow that was coming down, or the powder falling from the pan, in consequence of the position in which I stood. In another moment I drew the other trigger, though, unfortunately, with as little success, for my second, like my first barrel, also refused to perform its duty. "The bear had by this time roused himself, and was just springing from his lair, when Elg, who had followed closely in my rear, put my rifle, ready cocked, into my hand; this I as instantly discharged at the animal; and though the muzzle of it was within less than a foot of his head, strange to say, I managed to miss him altogether. I suppose most people will imagine this arose from trepidation; but, according to my own notion, it was from shooting in too great a hurry; I had no time, indeed, to take aim; my ball, however, I apprehend, all but grazed his skull, the point at which it was directed. "The bear now bolted from between my legs, and reached the surface of the snow; and, in consequence, we were, as the old saying goes, 'cheek by jowl' with each other. Here, as he stood grinning, I drove the muzzle of my rifle with considerable force under his ear, the point exposed to me, by which I partly succeeded in upsetting him. This foolish act arose rather from a feeling of ill nature and disappointment at my having so stupidly allowed him to escape, than from entertaining any apprehension of his attacking me, which he looked well-inclined to do. Very fortunately, the beast only resented this assault by seizing hold of the barrel of my rifle; for, after indenting this with his teeth, at about a foot from the muzzle, he thought it the wisest plan to walk himself off. "Fortunately for me, this bear was not large; had the contrary been the case, it is more than probable he would have given me a broken head. Escape at the time was impossible, and both Elg and myself were entirely unarmed, after I had discharged my rifle. It is true, one of our peasants was provided with an axe; but this man was far in the background, and it is besides more than doubtful whether he would have ventured to have rendered us assistance in the event of its turning out a serious affair. "I now reloaded my rifle, but the locks of my double gun being filled with the falling snow, I had no leisure to put it in order. Letting it remain in statu quo, therefore, we forthwith gave chase. "During the little delay that necessarily took place whilst the above operation was going on, the bear seemed to have made good use of his legs, as, to judge by the challenges of the dogs, who kept pretty well up with him, he had by this time got some distance ahead. Fortunately the snow was in good order for our skidor, and we were therefore enabled to proceed at a good pace. For a while, we had to contend against rising ground, and to force our way through a large and densely thick brake; but, when we had surmounted those difficulties, we pushed quickly forward, and gained rapidly upon the bear. "The run might now have lasted for near three quarters of an hour, during which the animal had proceeded in almost a direct line from the point where he had started; when, on reaching an eminence, we had the gratification of viewing him at about two hundred and fifty paces ahead: at this time he was galloping slowly for ward, though occasionally stopping, as if his attention was taken up with the dogs that were following a little in his rear. "We now dashed after the bear at the very top of our speed. The forest hereabouts was fortunately open, and the ground falling, and of course very favour able for our skidor; so that, from going at a killing pace, a very short time sufficed to bring us within sixty or seventy paces of the animal. We then halted; when, taking my rifle from Elg, who had it loose in his hand, I discharged it at the beast. He was still in the gallop, and rather crossing me; but my ball took the desired effect, for, entering one side of his neck, it passed out at the other, when he sank down, and instantly expired." Some days afterwards our indefatigable friend again set out from Asp berg, in quest of two bears, one in the vicinity of Lutenäs, in Norway, a hamlet situated on the Klar, about fourteen miles to the north-west, and the other in the parish of Lima, in Dalecarlia, about fifty miles in a south-easterly direction. The first gave him two or three very severe runs. One day, in particular, when the snow was in capital order for the skidor, they drove him about fifty miles. At intervals they were in pursuit of this bear for about a fortnight, driving him over a vast tract of the Norwegian and Dalecarlian forests. Yet they never once got a shot at him-and finally took a farewell glimpse of him on the summit of the Faxe-fjält, about fifty miles from the place where he was started, and a hundred and forty from Lapp-cottage! The party then wended their way on their skidor across the forest, to attack the other bear in the parish of Lima, which was about sixty miles distance in a southeasterly direction. He was couched in his lair in a very wild range of country to the westward of the Wenjaa Lake. Him, with little intermission, they pursued for a week, without once viewing him the snow being in such a slushy state from the effects of the sun, that they had literally to plough their way through it. During all the time they were badly off for provisions, all that part of the country being uninhabite ed. They generally bivouacked on the snow-and sometimes took up their lodgings at such sätterwalls as they fell in with in the forest. The heat from exertion was often so excessive, that Mr Lloyd, though stripped to shirt and trowsers, was often wet through, and the frost then changed his garments into plates of ice. The Elk was fairly done up, but Mr Lloyd stood it out famously, and was nothing the worse of wear at the last. The chase of the bear on skidor, he exultingly exclaims, is a noble amusement for even should it prove unsuccessful, one has at least the satisfaction of enjoying an animated run. It would appear that Mr Lloyd, on his return to Aspberg, must have travelled, on sledge or on skidor, between three or four hundred miles-and that both bears are probably alive at this day. In bear-hunting on skidor, the chasseur ought always to be accompanied by a couple of dogs. But good dogs are now scarce in Scandinavia. Sometimes when the bear is pursued by dogs, he becomes so enraged that he takes hold of the nearest stick or stone he can lay his paws upon, and flings it at his assailants. But he is a bad marksman; for instead of sending his weapon in the direction of his opponent, he not unfrequently whizzes it over his own head. So says Professor Nillson. We presume the Swedish and Norwegian boors take lessons from Bruin and that accounts for the small slaughter done by a cordon of fifteen hundred men. Sometimes even the old bears (the young ones do so frequently) take to trees. Mr Lloyd's friend Svensson, when chasing one on skidor, all of a sudden lost his. track-but looking upwards he saw the shaggy monster seated among the branches of a pine. The rifle soon made him bite the snow, and when he fell to the ground, he was so completely enveloped in that covering, that only one of his paws was to be seen. The chasse of the bear on skidor is very dangerous. It requires great skill to avoid his rush; and Mr Lloyd has heard of several men having been killed. Many are seen with faces disfigured, and otherwise maimed. Their eyes are occasionally torn out-fingers bitten off—and arms pierced from wrist to shoulder. When tumbled down by a bear, you must instantly sham Abraham, and pretend to be dead. That ruse always takes; and simple Bruin removes his carcass from above yours, and hobbles off-leaving you probably "face, breast, arms, and legs, all a mass of blood." Mr Lloyd himself was once in great danger from one "of these fellows." The animal had committed great ravages among the cattle in the line of forest situated between the river Klar and Dal. Twenty horses, in one summer, had fallen victims to his voracity-and he was the terror of the people of those parts. Accompanied by the Elk, Svensson, and two peasants, Mr Lloyd pursued him for a fortnight, and after an unsuccessful shot at him, and afterwards driving him from his lair, which occupied the whole surface of an immense ant-hill, at last, in a rather On re "I now lost no time in slipping my double gun out of its case, when, as the fellow was slowly retreating among the bushes, I discharged both my barrels, at him almost at the same instant. ceiving my fire, the monster, with his jaws distended, partially swung himself round, when, growling furiously, he seemed as if he was on the point of dashing towards us. The snow, however, thereabouts was unusually deep, which, coupled with the state of exhaustion he must naturally have been in from the long run we had given him, caused him probably to alter his determination, and instead of attacking us, he continued his retreat. This was perhaps fortunate; for, as he had the vantage-ground, and we were encumbered with our skidor, it might have been difficult for us to have got out of his way. "Svensson and the other peasant now shortly came up, when, after reloading my gun, and making the locks as water-proof as possible in my usual manner, which I effected by means of a candle-end that I carried about me for the purpose, we lost no time in following up the bear, which was evidently much wounded, as we saw by his tracks being deeply marked with blood. "As it was the post of danger, I now led the way; Elg and the peasants following in my wake. Thus we proceeded for some distance, until we came to a very thick and tangled brake. Having a suspicion that the beast might have sheltered himself here, I made a little detour around his tracks, and succeeded in ringing him." I now lost not a moment in taking off my skidor; for, in the event of an attack, these machines are highly dangerous, as I have said, in close cover; and advanced on foot into the thicket. "I had not, however, proceeded more than two or three paces, when a most terrific and lengthened growl announced that the bear was still in existence; and the next moment, and at only some ten or twelve paces distance, the quantity of snow which was hanging in the trees having prevented me from previously observing him, I viewed the fellow dashing forward at the full gallop; fortunately, I was not altogether taken by surprise, for my double gun was not only out of its case, but both the locks were on the full-cock. This was well, for the beast came at such a rattling pace, that, by the time I had dis charged my second barrel, he was within less than a couple of paces of the muzzle of my gun. When I fired my last shot, he was not coming directly towards me; for either my first had turned him—which the people asserted was the case,—or he did not observe us, owing to the closeness of the cover. By swerving my body to one side, however, for I had no time to move my feet, he luckily passed close alongside of me, without offering me any molestation. This, indeed, I apprehend, was out of his power; for, after receiving the contents of my last barrel, he slacken, ed his pace, and by the time he had proceeded some few steps farther, life was extinct, and he sank to rise no more. 66 Elg, who was only a short distance from me, behaved very well on this occasion; for, though my rifle was in readi ness in his hand, he refrained, agreeably to my previous instructions, from discharging it. My orders to him were, as I have said, only to fire in the event of the bear actually having me in his gripe; and to these directions, which few other men, under the circumstance, would probably have attended to, he paid obedience. "Our prize proved to be an immense male bear; indeed, Svensson stated, he had never seen but one equally large, in his lifetime. I subsequently caused him to be conveyed to Uddeholm, a distance of between forty and fifty miles, when we ascertained his weight to be four hundred and sixty English pounds. This, it must be recollected, was after a severe run, during which he had probably wasted not a little; and also, that it was in the winter time, when, from his stomach being contracted, he was naturally very much lighter than he would have been during the autumnal months; in point of fact, had this bear been slaughtered during the lat ter period of the year, his weight would probably have been between five and six hundred pounds. "On opening this beast, thirty-six hours after his death, and during the intermediate time he had been exposed to the open air, when the temperature was pretty se vere, we found that, owing to his excessive exertion, nearly the whole of the fat of his intestines was in a state of liquefaction, and in consequence we were necessitated to scoop it out with a cup. I have already made mention of this circumstance when speaking of the chasse of the bear during the summer season. "On taking the skin from the beast, we found he had received my eight bullets; for, though I only fired four times, I had on each occasion two running balls in either barrel. The balls from the two first discharges (as it was supposed) took |