The hunt became more and more profitable and enjoyable, as springanimated everything. In the morning at the break of day the forestwas full of voices, strange and undiscernible to the inhabitant ofthe town. There the heathcock clucked and sang his song of love,as he sat on the top branches of the cedar and admired the grey henscratching in the fallen leaves below. It was very easy toapproach this full-feathered Caruso and with a shot to bring himdown from his more poetic to his more utilitarian duties. Hisgoing out was an euthanasia, for he was in love and heard nothing.
Out in the clearing the blackcocks with their wide-spread spottedtails were fighting, while the hens strutting near, craning andchattering, probably some gossip about their fighting swains,watched and were delighted with them. From the distance flowed ina stern and deep roar, yet full of tenderness and love, the matingcall of the deer; while from the crags above came down the shortand broken voice of the mountain buck. Among the bushes frolickedthe hares and often near them a red fox lay flattened to the groundwatching his chance. I never heard any wolves and they are usuallynot found in the Siberian regions covered with mountains andforest.
But there was another beast, who was my neighbor, and one of us had to goaway. One day, coming back from the hunt with a big heathcock, Isuddenly noticed among the trees a black, moving mass. I stoppedand, looking very attentively, saw a bear, digging away at an ant-hill. Smelling me, he snorted violently, and very quickly shuffledaway, astonishing me with the speed of his clumsy gait. Thefollowing morning, while still lying under my overcoat, I wasattracted by a noise behind my den. I peered out very carefullyand discovered the bear. He stood on his hind legs and was noisilysniffing, investigating the question as to what living creature hadadopted the custom of the bears of housing during the winter underthe trunks of fallen trees. I shouted and struck my kettle withthe ax. My early visitor made off with all his energy; but hisvisit did not please me. It was very early in the spring that thisoccurred and the bear should not yet have left his hibernatingplace. He was the so-called "ant-eater," an abnormal type of bearlacking in all the etiquette of the first families of the bearclan.
I knew that the "ant-eaters" were very irritable and audacious andquickly I prepared myself for both the defence and the charge. Mypreparations were short. I rubbed off the ends of five of mycartridges, thus making dum-dums out of them, a sufficientlyintelligible argument for so unwelcome a guest. Putting on my coatI went to the place where I had first met the bear and where therewere many ant-hills. I made a detour of the whole mountain, lookedin all the ravines but nowhere found my caller. Disappointed andtired, I was approaching my shelter quite off my guard when Isuddenly discovered the king of the forest himself just coming outof my lowly dwelling and sniffing all around the entrance to it. Ishot. The bullet pierced his side. He roared with pain and angerand stood up on his hind legs. As the second bullet broke one ofthese, he squatted down but immediately, dragging the leg andendeavoring to stand upright, moved to attack me. Only the thirdbullet in his breast stopped him. He weighed about two hundred totwo hundred fifty pounds, as near as I could guess, and was verytasty. He appeared at his best in cutlets but only a little lesswonderful in the Hamburg steaks which I rolled and roasted on hotstones, watching them swell out into great balls that were as lightas the finest souffle omelettes we used to have at the "Medved" inPetrograd. On this welcome addition to my larder I lived from thenuntil the ground dried out and the stream ran down enough so that Icould travel down along the river to the country whither Ivan haddirected me.
Ever traveling with the greatest precautions I made the journeydown along the river on foot, carrying from my winter quarters allmy household furniture and goods, wrapped up in the deerskin bagwhich I formed by tying the legs together in an awkward knot; andthus laden fording the small streams and wading through the swampsthat lay across my path. After fifty odd miles of this I came tothe country called Sifkova, where I found the cabin of a peasantnamed Tropoff, located closest to the forest that came to be mynatural environment. With him I lived for a time.
* * * * *Now in these unimaginable surroundings of safety and peace, summingup the total of my experience in the Siberian taiga, I make thefollowing deductions. In every healthy spiritual individual of ourtimes, occasions of necessity resurrect the traits of primitiveman, hunter and warrior, and help him in the struggle with nature.
It is the prerogative of the man with the trained mind and spiritover the untrained, who does not possess sufficient science andwill power to carry him through. But the price that the culturedman must pay is that for him there exists nothing more awful thanabsolute solitude and the knowledge of complete isolation fromhuman society and the life of moral and aesthetic culture. Onestep, one moment of weakness and dark madness will seize a man andcarry him to inevitable destruction. I spent awful days ofstruggle with the cold and hunger but I passed more terrible daysin the struggle of the will to kill weakening destructive thoughts.
The memories of these days freeze my heart and mind and even now,as I revive them so clearly by writing of my experiences, theythrow me back into a state of fear and apprehension. Moreover, Iam compelled to observe that the people in highly civilized statesgive too little regard to the training that is useful to man inprimitive conditions, in conditions incident to the struggleagainst nature for existence. It is the single normal way todevelop a new generation of strong, healthy, iron men, with at thesame time sensitive souls.
Nature destroys the weak but helps the strong, awakening in thesoul emotions which remain dormant under the urban conditions ofmodern life.