However, on the date I am writing about we had no such adventure; the day was bright, and the scenery beautiful. At the end of the lake a huge terrace, covered with grass, extended between two ranges of mountains, the terrace’s top as level, and its side as accurate, as if made and turfed by a landscape gardener, the only difference being that it was about two hundred feet high. Behind it we could see mountain after mountain, their sides and summits, broken and jagged, extending far away. The ground between the terrace foot (from which, as from the bowels of the earth, a little river ran brawling to the lake) and the margin of the lake was covered with a dense forest of birch. This we passed through, and making a wide détour down wind, we climbed a hill behind and overlooking the top of the terrace. When we arrived there we saw on the top of the terrace some curious circular basins, all containing water. Their diameter would be about two or three hundred yards. A strong stream ran into the right-hand basin, but there was no apparent outlet to any of them. Doubtless the water from these basins fed the subterranean stream that issued from the foot of the terrace. All round the basins, and extending for some distance from the margin of the water, was a rank and luxuriant growth of giant angelica. Far down below us we could see with the glasses a magnificent reindeer feeding--a runaway from one of the tame herds, no doubt. We had a capital place, the wind blowing straight from the basins to us. Keeping a sharp look-out, we discussed some smoked salmon and bread, and had hardly finished it when suddenly a bear appeared, waddling with his quaint, slouching gait to the edge of one of the basins, where he began to feed greedily on the sweet angelica. I slipped down at the back of the hill, leaving my little party to watch him from the top. Getting quickly under cover of some birch-trees, I descended, silently crept up to the edge of the basin, and, peeping from behind a bush, saw him about 150 yards away, but his head was towards me; so, wishing for a better chance, I crawled back, and, making a circuit, got up again within eighty yards. This time his side was towards me, and I got a steady shot from behind the bush, aiming behind the shoulder. The bear sprang up with a loud roar, and, looking round to see ‘who hove that brick,’ charged straight up the bank, getting my second barrel as he came. He charged thirty yards without a falter, and then suddenly collapsed and rolled over stone dead. After loading I walked up to the bear, first throwing some stones at him to make sure he was not shamming, and found it was an old, large she bear; that both my shots had hit her, the first behind the shoulder, having cut right through the heart, and yet, notwithstanding this and the second shot through the chest, she had managed to charge thirty yards apparently uninjured. We had much trouble to convey the head, skin, and some of the meat down to the boat, which was greatly overloaded; but the weather was dead calm, so that, keeping close along the shore, with continual bailing, we arrived safely at the end of the lake, where, leaving the boat, we carried the trophy down to another boat on the Fjord, and so home about 2 A.M.