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TRUE BEAR STORIES.

B

TRUE

iAR STORi:

-iS

BY JOAQUIN MILLER,

WITH

INTRODUCTORY NOTES

BY

DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN,

President of Leland Stanford, Jr., University.

TOGETHER WITH A THRILLING ACCOUNT OF THE
CAPTURE OF THE CELEBRATED
GRIZZLY "MONARCH."

FULLY ILLUSTRATED.

CHICAGO AND NEW YORK :

RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.

Copyright, 1900, by Rand, McNally & Co.

G-21

DEDICATED

TO

MY DEAR LITTLE DAUGHTER,
JUANITA MILLER,

FOR WHOSE PLEASURE AND INSTRUCTION I HAVE MANY TIMES

DUG UP THE MOST OF THESE STORIES FROM

OUT THE DAYS OF MY BOYHOOD.

PREFACE.

My Bright Young Reader: I was once
exactly your own age. Like all boys, I was,
from the first, fond of bear stories, and
above all, I did not like stories that seemed
the least bit untrue. I always preferred a
natural and reasonable story and one that
would instruct as well as interest. This I
think best for us all, and I have acted on
this line in compiling these comparatively
few bear stories from a long life of action
in our mountains and up and down the
continent.

As a rule, the modern bear is not a
bloody, bad fellow, whatever he may have
been in Bible days. You read, almost any
circus season, about the killing of his keeper
by a lion, a tiger, a panther, or even the
dreary old elephant, but you never hear of
a tame bear's hurting anybody.

I suppose you have been told, and be-
lieve, that bears will eat boys, good or bad,
if they meet them in the woods. This is
not true. On the contrary, there are several
well-authenticated cases, in Germany most-
ly, where bears have taken lost children
under their protection, one boy having been
i

2 PEEFACE.

reared from the age of four to sixteen by
a she bear without ever seeing the face of
man.

I have known several persons to be
maimed or killed in battles with bears, but
in every case it was not the bear that began
the fight, and in all my experience of about
half a century I never knew a bear to eat
human flesh, as does the tiger and like
beasts.

Each branch of the bear family is repre-
sented here and each has its characteristics.
By noting these as you go along you may
learn something not set down in the school-
books. For the bear is a shy old hermit and
is rarely encountered in his wild state by
anyone save the hardy hunter, whose only
interest in the event is to secure the skin
and carcass.

Of course, now and then, a man of science
meets a bear in the woods, but the meeting
is of short duration. If the bear does not
leave, the man of books does, and so we
seldom get his photograph as he really ap-
pears in his wild state. The first and only
bear I ever saw that seemed to be sitting
for his photograph was the swamp, or
"sloth," bear — Ursus Labiatus — found in

PREFACE. 3

the marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi
River. You will read of an encounter with
him further on.

I know very well that there exists a good
deal of bad feeling between boys and bears,
particularly on the part of boys. The trou-
ble began, I suppose, about the time when
that old she bear destroyed more than forty
boys at a single meeting, for poking fun
at a good old prophet. And we read that
David, when a boy, got very angry at a
she bear and slew her single-handed and
alone for interfering with his flock. So
you see the feud between the boy and bear
family is an old one indeed.

But I am bound to say that I have found
much that is pathetic, and something that is
almost half -human, in this poor, shaggy, shuf-
fling hermit. He doesn't want much, only
the wildest and most worthless parts of the
mountains or marshes, where, if you will
let him alone, he will let you alone, as a
rule. Sometimes, out here in California,
he loots a pig-pen, and now and then he gets
among the bees. Only last week, a little
black bear got his bead fast in a bee-hive
that had been improvised from a nail-keg,
and the bee-farmer killed him with a pitch-

4 PREFACE.

fork; but it is only when hungry and far
from home that he seriously molests us.

The bear is a wise beast. This is, per-
haps, because he never says anything. Next
to the giraffe, which you may know never
makes any noise or note whatever, notwith-
standing the wonderful length of his throat,
the bear is the most noiseless of beasts.
With his nose to the ground all the time,
standing up only now and then to pull a
wild plum or pick a bunch of grapes, or
knock a man down if he must, he seems to
me like some weary old traveler that has
missed the right road of life and doesn't
quite know what to do with himself. Ah!
if he would only lift up his nose and look
about over this beautiful world, as the In-
dians say the grizzly bear was permitted to
do before he disobeyed and got into trouble,
an account of which you will find further on,
why, the bear might be less a bear.

Stop here and reflect on how much there
is in keeping your face well lifted. The
pig with his snout to the ground will be
forever a pig; the bear will be a bear to
the end of his race, because he will not hold
up his head in the world; but the horse —
look at the horse ! However, our business is
with the bear now.

CONTENTS.

Page

INTRODUCTORY NOTES, . . .7

I. A BEAR ON FIRE, . . 13

II. MUSIC-LOVING BEARS, . . 29

III. MY FIRST GRIZZLY, . . 36

IV. TWIN BABIES, . . .44

V. IN SWIMMING WITH A BEAR, . 56

•

VI. A FAT LITTLE EDITOR AND THREE

LITTLE BROWNS, . 68

VII. TREEING A BEAR, . . .76

VIII. BILL CROSS AND His PET BEAR, 86

IX. THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR, . 96

X. As A HUMORIST, . . 106

XI. A GRIZZLY'S SLY LITTLE JOKE, . 110

XII. THE GRIZZLY AS FREMONT FOUND

HIM, . 112

6 CONTENTS.

XIII. THE BEAR WITH SPECTACLES, . 116

XIV. THE BEAR-SLATER OF SAN DIEGO, 129
XV. ALASKAN AND POLAR BEAR, . 146

XVI. MONNEHAN, THE GREAT BEAR-

OF OREGON, . . 156

XVII. THE BEAR ''MONARCH"— How HE

WAS CAPTURED, . . 166

INTRODUCTORY NOTES.

The bear is the most human of all the
beasts. He is not the most man-like in an-
atomy, nor the nearest in the line of evolu-
tion. The likeness is rather in his temper
and way of doing things and in the vicissi-
tudes of his life. He is a savage, of course,
but most men are that — wild members of a
wild fauna — and, like wild men, the bear
is a clumsy, good-natured blunderer, eating
with his fingers in default of a knife, and
preferring any day a mouthful of berries
to the excitement of a fight.

In this book Joaquin Miller has tried to
show us the bear as he is, not the traditional
bear of the story-books. In season and out
of season, the bear has been represented al-
ways the same bear, "as much alike as so
many English noblemen in evening dress,"
and always as a bloody bear.

Mr. Miller insists that there are bears
and bears, as unlike one another in nature
and action as so many horses, hogs or goats.
This much they have in common — bears are

7

8 INTRODUCTORY NOTES.

never cruel. They are generally full of
homely, careless kindness, and are very fond
of music as well as of honey, blackberries,
nuts, fish and other delicacies of the savage
feast.

The matter of season affects a bear's tem-
per and looks as the time of the day affects
those of a man.

He goes to bed in the fall, when the fish
and berry season is over, fat and happy,
with no fight in him. He comes out in
spring, just as good-natured, if not so fat.
But the hot sun melts him down. His hun-
gry hunt for roots, bugs, ants and small
game makes him lean and cross. His claws
grow long, his hair is unkempt and he is
soon a shaggy ghost of himself, looking
"like a second-hand sofa with the stuffing
coming out," and in this out-at-elbows condi-
tion he loses his own self-respect.

Mr. Miller has strenuously insisted that
bears of the United States are of more than
one or two species. In this he has the un-
qualified support of the latest scientific in-
vestigations. Not long ago naturalists were
disposed to recognize but three kinds of bear
in North America. These are the polar
bear, the black bear, and the grizzly bear,

INTRODUCTORY NOTES. 9

and even the grizzly was thought doubtful,
a slight variation of the bear of Europe.

But the careful study of bears' skulls has
changed all that, and our highest authority
on bears, Dr. C. Hart Merriam of the De-
partment of Agriculture, now recognizes
not less than ten species of bear in the limits
of the United States and Alaska.

In his latest paper (1896), a "Preliminary
Synopsis of the American Bears," Dr. Mer-
riam groups these animals as follows :

I. POLAR BEARS.

1. POLAR BEAR: Thalarctos maritimus
Linnaeus. Found on all Arctic shores.

II. BLACK BEARS.

2. COMMON BLACK BEAR (sometimes
brown or cinnamon) : Ursus americanus
Pallas. Found throughout the United
States.

3. YELLOW BEAR (sometimes black or
brown) : Ursus luteolus Griffith. Swamps
of Louisiana and Texas.

4. EVERGLADE BEAR: Ursus floridanus
Merriam. Everglades of Florida.

5. GLACIER BEAR: Ursus emmonsi Dall.
About Mount St. Elias.

10 INTBODUCTORY NOTES.

III. GRIZZLY BEAKS.

6. THE GRIZZLY BEAR: Ursus horribilis
Ord. Found in the western parts of North
America.

Underpins species are four varieties: the
original horribilis, or Kocky Mountain griz-
zly, from Montana to the Great Basin of
Utah; the variety californicus Merriam,
the California grizzly, from the Sierra Ne-
vada; variety horriaeus Baird, the Sonora
grizzly, from Arizona and the South; and
variety alascensis Merriam, the Alaska
grizzly, from Alaska.

7. THE BARREN GROUND BEAR: Ursus
richardsoni Mayne Reid. A kind of grizzly
found about Hudson Bay.

IV. GREAT BROWN BEARS.

8. THE YAKUTAT BEAR: Ursus dalli
-Merriam. From about Mount St. Elias.

9. THE SITKA BEAR: Ursus sitkemis
Merriam. From about Sitka.

10. THE KADIAK BEAR: Ursus midden-
dorfi Merriam. From Kadiak and the Pen-
insula of Alaska,

These three bears are even larger than

INTRODUCTORY NOTES. II

the grizzly, and the Kadiak Bear is the larg-
est of all the land bears of the world. It
prowls about over the moss of the moun-
tains, feeding on berries and fish.

The sea-bear, Callorhinus ursinus, which
we call the fur seal, is also a cousin of the
bear, having much in common with its bear
ancestors of long ago, but neither that nor
its relations, the sea-lion and the walrus,
are exactly bears to-day.

Of all the real bears, Mr. Miller treats of
five in the pages of this little book. All the
straight "bear stories" relate to Ursus amer-
icanus, as most bear stories in our country
do. The grizzly stories treat of Ursus hor-
tgibilis catifornicus. The lean bear of the
Louisiana swamps is Ursus luteolus, and
the Polar Bear is Thalarctos maritimus.
The author of the book has tried without
intrusion of technicalities to bring the
distinctive features of the different bears
before the reader and to instruct as well as
to interest children and children's parents
in the simple realities of bear life.

DAVID STARR JORDAN.
Leland Stanford) Jr., University.
2

TRUE BEAR STORIES.

i.

A BEAR ON FIRE.

It is now more than a quarter of a cen-
tury since I saw the woods of Mount
Shasta in flames, and beasts of all sorts,
even serpents, crowded together; but I can
never forget, never!

It looked as if we would have a cloud-
burst that fearful morning. We three were
making our way by slow marches from
Soda Springs across the south base of
Mount Shasta to the Modoc lava beds —
two English artists and myself. We had
saddle horses, or, rather, two saddle horses
and a mule, for our own use. Six Indians,
with broad leather or elkskin straps across
their foreheads, had been chartered to
carry the kits and traps. They were men
a is

14 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

of means and leisure, these artists, and
were making the trip for the fish, game,
scenery and excitement and everything, in
fact, that was in the adventure. I was
merely their hired guide.

This second morning out, the Indians —
poor slaves, perhaps, from the first, cer-
tainly not warriors with any spirit in them
— began to sulk. They had risen early and
kept hovering together and talking, or,
rather, making signs in the gloomiest sort
of fashion. We had hard work to get them
to do anything at all, and even after break-
fast was ready they packed up without
tasting food.

The air was ugly, for that region — hot,
heavy, and without light or life. It was
what in some parts of South America they
call "earthquake weather." Eren the
horses sulked as we mounted; but the mule
shot ahead through the brush at one*, and
this induced the ponies to follow.

The Englishmen thought the Indians
and horses were only tired from the day

A BEAR ON FIRE. 15

before, but we soon found the whole force
plowing ahead through the dense brush
and over fallen timber on a double quick.

Then we heard low, heavy thunder in the
heavens. Were they running away from a
thunder-storm? The English artists, who
had been doing India and had come to love
the indolent patience and obedience of the
black people, tried to call a halt. No use.
I shouted to the Indians in their own
tongue. "Tokau! Ki-sa! Kiu!" (Hasten!
Quick! Quick!) was all the answer I could
get from the red, hot face that was thrown
for a moment back over the load and
shoulder. So we shot forward. In fact,
the horses now refused all regard for the
bit, and made their own way through the
brush with wondrous skill and speed.

We were flying from fire, not flood ! Piti-
ful what a few years of neglect will do
toward destroying a forest! When a lad
I had galloped my horse in security and
comfort all through this region. It was
like a park then. Now it was a dense

16 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

tangle of undergrowth and a mass of fallen
timber. What a feast for flames! In one
of the very old books on America in the
British Museum — possibly the very oldest
on the subject — the author tells of the
park-like appearance of the American for-
ests. He tells his English friends back at
home that it is most comfortable to ride
to the hounds, "since the Indian squats
(squaws) do set fire to the brush and leaves
every spring," etc.

But the "squats" had long since disap-
peared from the forests of Mount Shasta;
and here we were tumbling over and tear-
ing through ten years' or more of accumu-
lation of logs, brush, leaves, weeds and
grass that lay waiting for a sea of fire to
roll over all like a mass of lava.

And now the wind blew past and over
us. Bits of white ashes sifted down like
snow. Surely the sea of fire was coming,
coming right on after us! Still there was
no sign, save this little sift of ashes, no
sound; nothing at all except the trained

A BEAR ON FIRE. 17

sense of the Indians and the terror of the
"cattle" (this is what the Englishmen
called our horses) to give us warning.

In a short time we struck an arroyo, or
canyon, that was nearly free from brush
and led steeply dow'n to the cool, deep
waters of the McCloud River. Here we
found the Indians had thrown their loads
and themselves on the ground.

They got up in sulky silence, and, strip-
ping our horses, turned them loose; and
then, taking our saddles, they led us
hastily up out of the narrow mouth of the
arroyo under a little steep stone bluff.

They did not say a word or make any
sign, and we were all too breathless and
bewildered to either question or protest.
The sky was black, and thunder made the
woods tremble. We were hardly done wip-
ing the blood and perspiration from our
torn hands and faces where we sat when
the mule jerked up his head, sniffed, snort-
ed and then plunged headlong into the
river and struck out for the deep forest

18 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

on the farther bank, followed by the
ponies.

The mule is the most traduced of all ani-
mals. A single mule has more sense than
a whole stableful of horses. You can han-
dle a mule easily if the barn is burning; he
keeps his head; but a horse becomes in-
sane. He will rush right into the fire, if
allowed to, and you can only handle him,
and that with difficulty if he sniffs the fire,
by blindfolding him. Trust a mule in case
of peril or a panic long before a horse. The
brother of Solomon and willful son of David
surely had some of the great temple-build-
er's wisdom and discernment, for we read
that he rode a mule. True, he lost his head
and got hung up by the hair, but that is
nothing against the mule.

As we turned our eyes from seeing the
animals safely over, right there by us and
a little behind us, through the willows of
the canyon and over the edge of the water,
we saw peering and pointing toward the

A BEAR ON FIRE. 19

other side dozens of long black and brown
outreaching noses. Elk!

They had come noiselessly, they stood
motionless. They did not look back or
aside, only straight ahead. We could al-
most have touched the nearest one. They
were large and fat, almost as fat as cows;
certainly larger than the ordinary Jersey.
The peculiar thing about them was the
way, the level way, in which they held their
small, long heads — straight out; the huge
horns of the males lying far back on their
shoulders. And then for the first time I
could make out what these horns are for
— to part the brush with as they lead
through the thicket, and thus save their
coarse coats of hair, which is very rotten,
and could be torn off in a little time if not
thus protected. They are never used to
fight with, never; the elk uses only his
feet. If on the defense, however, the male
elk will throw his nose close to the ground
and receive the enemy on his horns.

Suddenly and all together, and perhaps

20 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

they had only paused a second, they moved
on into the water, led by a bull with a
head of horns like a rocking-chair. And
his rocking-chair rocked his head under
water much of the time. The cold, swift
water soon broke the line, only the leader
making the bank directly before us, while
the others drifted far down and out of
sight.

Our artists, meantime, had dug up pencil
and pad and begun work. But an Indian
jerked the saddles, on which the English-
men sat, aside, and the work was stopped.
Everything was now packed up close under
the steep little ledge of rocks. An ava-
lanche of smaller wild animals, mostly
deer, was upon us. Many of these had their
tongues hanging from their half-opened
mouths. They did not attempt to drink, as
you would suppose, but slid into the water
silently almost as soon as they came.
Surely they must have seen us, but cer«
tainly they took no notice of us. And such
order! No crushing or crowding, as you

A BEAR ON FIRE. 21

see cattle in corrals, aye, as you see people
sometimes in the cars.

And now came a torrent of little creep-
ing things: rabbits, rats, squirrels! None
of these smaller creatures attempted to
cross, but crept along in the willows and
brush close to the water.

They loaded down the willows till they
bent into the water, and the terrified little
creatures floated away without the least
bit of noise or confusion. And still the
black skies were filled with the solemn
boom of thunder. In fact, we had not yet
heard any noise of any sort except thunder,
not even our own voices. There was some-
thing more eloquent in the air now, some-
thing more terrible than man or beast, and
all things were awed into silence — a pro-
found silence.

And all this time countless creatures,
little creatures and big, were crowding the
bank on our side or swimming across or
floating down, down, down the swift, wood-
hung waters. Suddenly the stolid leader

22 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

of the Indians threw his two naked arms in
the air and let them fall, limp and helpless
at his side; then he pointed out into the
stream, for there embers and living and
dead beasts began to drift and sweep down
the swift waters from above. The Indians
now gathered up the packs and saddles
and made a barricade above, for it was
clear that many a living thing wrould now
be borne down upon us.

The two Englishmen looked one another
in the face long and thoughtfully, pulling
their feet under them to keep from being
trodden on. Then, after another avalanche
of creatures of all sorts and sizes, a sort of
Noah's ark this time, one of them said to
the other:

"Beastly, you know!"

"Awful beastly, don't you know!"

As they were talking entirely to them-
selves and in their own language, I did
not trouble myself to call their attention
to an enormous yellow rattlesnake which
had suddenly and noiselessly slid down,

A BEAR ON FIRE. 23

over the steep little bluff of rocks behind
us, into our midst.

But now note this fact — every man
there, red or white, saw or felt that huge
and noiseless monster the very second she
slid among us. For as I looked, even as I
first looked, and then turned to see what
the others would say or do, they were all
looking at the glittering eyes set in that
coffin-like head.

The Indians did not move back or seem
nearly so much frightened as when they
saw the drift of embers and dead beasts in
the river before them; but the florid En-
glishmen turned white! They resolutely
arose, thrust their hands in their pockets
and stood leaning their ba.cks hard against
the steep bluff. Then another snake, long,
black and beautiful, swept his supple neck
down between them and thrust his red
tongue forth — as if a bit of the flames had
already reached us.

Fortunately, this particular "wisest of
all the beasts of the field," was not dis-

24 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

posed to tarry. In another second he had
swung to the ground and was making a
thousand graceful curves in the swift
water for the further bank.

The world, even the world of books,
seems to know nothing at all about the
wonderful snakes that live in the woods.
The woods rattlesnake is as large as at
least twenty ordinary rattlesnakes; and
Indians say it is entirely harmless. The
enormous black snake, I know, is entirely
without venom. In all my life, spent most-
ly in the camp, I have seen only three of
those monstrous yellow woods rattle-
snakes; one in Indiana, one in Oregon and
the other on this occasion here on the
banks of the McCloud. Such bright eyes!
It was hard to stop looking at them.

Meantime a good many bears had come
and gone. The bear is a good swimmer,
and takes to the water without fear. He
is, in truth, quite a fisherman; so much of
a fisherman, in fact, that in salmon season
here his flesh is unfit for food. The pitiful

A BEAR ON FIRE. 25

part of it all was to see such little crea-
tures as could not swim clinging all up
and down and not daring to take to the
water.

Unlike his domesticated brother, we saw
several wild-cats take to the water prompt-
ly. The wild-cat, you must know, has no
tail to speak of. But the panther and Cali-
fornian lion are well equipped in this re-
spect and abhor the water.

I constantly kept an eye over my shoul-
der at the ledge or little bluff of rocks, ex-
pecting to see a whole row of lions and
panthers sitting there, almost "cheek by
jowl" with my English friends, at any mo-
ment. But strangely enough, we saw
neither panther nor lion; nor did we see
a single grizzly among all the bears that
came that way.

We now noticed that one of the Indians
had become fascinated or charmed by look-
ing too intently at the enormous serpent in
our midst. The snake's huge, coffin-shaped
head, as big as your open palm, was slowly

2C TRUE BEAR STORIES.

swaying from side to side. The Indian's
head was doing the same, and their eyes
were drawing closer and closer together.
Whatever there may be in the Bible storj
of Eve and the serpent, whether a figure
or a fact, who shall say? — but it is cer-
tainly, in some sense, true.

An Indian will not kill a rattlesnake.
But to break the charm, in this case, they
caught their companion by the shoulders
and forced him back flat on the ground.
And there he lay, crying like a child, the
first and only Indian I ever saw cry. And
then suddenly boom! boom! boom! as if
heaven burst. It began to rain in torrents.

And just then, as we began to breathe
freely and feel safe, there came a crash
and bump a.nd bang above our heads, and
high over our heads from off the ledge be-
hind us! Over our heads like a rocket, in
an instant and clear into the water, leaped
a huge black bear, a ball of fire! his fat
sides in flame. He sank out of sight but
soon came up, spun around like a top, dived

A BEAR ON FIRE. 27

again, then again spun around. But he
got across, I am glad to say. And this al
ways pleases my little girl, Juanita. He
sat there on the bank looking back at us
quite a time. Finally he washed his face,
like a cat, then quietly went away. The
rattlesnake was the last to cross.

The beautiful yellow beast was not at
all disconcerted, but with the serenest dig-
nity lifted her yellow folds, coiled and un-
coiled slowly, curved high in the air,
arched her glittering neck of gold, widened
her body till broad as your two hands, and
so slid away over the water to the other
side through the wild white rain. The
cloudburst put out the fire instantly, show-
ing that, though animals have superhuman
foresight, they don't know everything be-
fore the time.

"Beastly! I didn't get a blawsted sketch,
you know."

"Awful beastly! Neither did I, don't you
know."

And that was all my English friends

3

28 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

said. The Indians made their moaning and
whimpering friend who had been overcome
by the snake pull himself together and
they swam across and gathered up the
"cattle."

Some men say a bear cannot leap; but I
say there are times when a bear can leap
like a tiger. This wa» one of the times.

II.

MUSIC-LOVING BEARS.

No, don't despise the bear, either in his
life or his death. He is a kingly fellow,
every inch a king; a curious, monkish,
music-loving, roving Robin Hood of his
somber woods — a silent monk, who knows
a great deal more than he tells. And please
don't go to look at him and sit in judgment
on him behind the bars. Put yourself in
his place and see how much of manhood or
kinghood would be left in you with a muz-
zle on your mouth, and only enough liberty
left to push your nose between two rusty
bars and catch the peanut which the good
little boy has found to be a bad one and so
generously tosses it to the bear.

Of course, the little boy, remembering
the experience of about forty other little
boys in connection with the late bald-
headed Elijah, has a prejudice against the

3 39

30 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

bear family, but why the full-grown man
should so continually persist in caging this
shaggy-coated, dignified, kingly and an-
cient brother of his, I cannot see, unless it
is that he knows almost nothing at all of
his better nature, his shy, innocent love of
a joke, his partiality for music and his im-
perial disdain of death. And so, with a
desire that man may know a little more
about this storied and classic creature
which, with noiseless and stately tread, has
come down to us out of the past, and is as
quietly passing away from the face of the
earth, these fragmentary facts are set
down. But first as to his love of music. A
bear loves music better than he loves
honey, and that is saying that he loves
music better than he loves his life.

We were going to mill, father and I, and
Lyte Howard, in Oregon, about forty years
ago, with ox-teams, a dozen or two bags of
wheat, threshed with a. flail and winnowed
with a wagon cover, and were camped for
the night by the Calipoola River; for it took

MUSIC-LOVING BEARS. 31

two days to reach the mill. Lyte got out
Ms fiddle, keeping his gun, of course, close
at hand. Pretty soon the oxen came down,
came very close, so close that they almost
put their cold, moist noses against the
backs of our necks as we sat there on the
ox-yokes or reclined in our blankets,
around the crackling pine-log fire and lis-
tened to the wild, sweet strains that swept
up and down and up till the very tree tops
neemed to dance and quiver with delight.

Then suddenly father seemed to feel the
presence of something or somebody
strange, and I felt it, too. But the fiddler
felt, heard, saw nothing but the divine,
wild melody that made the very pine trees
dance and quiver to their tips. Oh, for the
pure, wild, sweet, plaintive music once
more! the music of "Money Musk," "Zip
Coon," "OP Dan Tucker" and all the other
dear old airs that once made a thousand
happy feet keep time on the puncheon
floors from Hudson's bank to the Oregon.
But they are no more, now. They have

32 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

passed away forever with the Indian, the
pioneer, and the music-loving bear. It is
strange how a man — I mean the natural
man — will feel a presence long before he
hears it or sees it. You can always feel the
approach of a — but I forget. You are of
another generation, a generation that only
reads, takes thought at second hand only,
if at all, and you would not understand;
so let us get forward and not waste time
in explaining the unexplainable to you.

Father got up, turned about, put me be-
hind him like, as an animal will its young,
and peered back and down through the
dense tangle of the deep river bank be-
tween two of the huge oxen which had
crossed the plains with us to the water's
edge; then he reached around and drew me
to him with his left hand, pointing between
the oxen sharp down the bank with his
right forefinger.

A bear! two bears! and another coming;
one already more than half way across on
the great, mossy log that lay above the

MUSIC-LOVING BEARS. 33

deep, sweeping waters of the Calipoola ;
and Lyte kept on, and the wild, sweet
music leaped up and swept through the de-
lighted and dancing boughs above. Then
father reached back to the fire and thrust
a long, burning bough deeper into the dy-
ing embers and the glittering sparks leaped
and laughed and danced and swept out and
up and up as if to companion with the
stars. Then Lyte knew. He did not hear,
he did not see, he only felt; but the fiddle
forsook his fingers and his chin in a second,
and his gun was to his face with the muzzle
thrust down between the oxen. And then
my father's gentle hand reached out, lay
on that long, black, Kentucky rifle barrel,
and it dropped down, slept once more at
the fiddler's side, and again the melodies;
and the very stars came down, believe me,
to listen, for they never seemed so big and
so close by before. The bears sat down on
their haunches at last, and one of them
kept opening his mouth and putting out his
red tongue, as if he really wanted to taste

34 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

the music. Every now and then one of
them would lift up a paw and gently tap
the ground, as if to keep time with the
music. And both my papa and Lyte said
next1 day that those bears really wanted to
dance.

And that is all there is to say about that,
except that my father was the gentlest gen-
tleman I ever knew and his influence must
have been boundless; for who ever before
heard of any hunter laying down his rifle
with a family of fat black bears holding
the little snow-white v.foss on their breasts
almost within reach of its muzzle?

The moon came up by and by, and the
chin of the weary fiddler sank lower and
lower, till all was still. The oxen lay down
and ruminated, with their noses nearly
against us. Then the coal-black bears
melted away before the milk-white moon,
and we slept there, with the sweet breath
of the cattle, like incense, upon us.

But how does a bear die? Ah, I had for-
gotten. I must tell you of death, then.

MUSIC-LOVING BEARS. 35

Well, we have different kinds of bears. I
know little of the Polar bear, and so say
nothing positively of him. I am told, how-
ever, that there is not, considering his size,
much snap or grit about him; but as for
the others, I am free to say that they live
and die like gentlemen.

I shall find time, as we go forward, to
set down many incidents out of my own
experience to prove that the bear is often
a humorist, and never by any means a bad
fellow.

Judge Highton, odd' as it may seem, has
left the San Francisco bar for the "bar" of
Mount Shasta every season for more than
a quarter of a century, and he probably
knows more about bears than any other
eminently learned man in the world, and
Henry Highton will tell you that the bear
is a good fellow at home, good all through,
a brave, modest, sober old monk.

A monkish Robin Hood
In his good green wood.

III.

MY FIRST GRIZZLY.

One of Fremont's men, Mountain Jo*
had taken a fancy to me down in Oregon,
and finally, to put three volumes in three
lines, I turned up as partner in his Soda
Springs ranch on the Sacramento, where
the famous Shasta-water is now bottled, I
believe. Then the Indians broke out,
burned us up and we followed and fought
them in Castle rocks, and I was shot down.
Then my father came on to watch by my
side, where I lay, under protection of
soldiers, at the mouth of Shot Creek can-
yon.

As the manzanita berries began to turn
the mountain sides red and the brown pine
quills to sift down their perfumed carpets
at our feet, I began to feel some strength
and wanted to fight, but I had had enough
of Indians. I wanted to fight grizzly bears

36

MY FIRST GRIZZLY. 37

this time. The fact is, they used to leave
tracks in the pack trail every night, and
right close about the camp, too, as big as
the head of a barrel.

Now father was well up in woodcraft, no
man better, but he never fired a gun. Never,
in his seventy years of life among savages,
did that gentle Quaker, school-master,
magistrate and Christian ever fire a gun.
But he always allowed me to have my own
way as a hunter, and now that I was get-
ting well of my wound he was so glad and
grateful that he willingly joined in with
the soldiers to help me kill one of these
huge bears that had made the big tracks.

Do you know why a beast, a bear of all
beasts, is so very much afraid of fire? Well,
in the first place, as said before, a bear is
a gentleman, in dress as well as address,
and so likes a decent coat. If a bear should
get his coat singed he would hide away
from sight of both man and beast for half
a year. But back of his pride is the fact
that a fat bear will burn like a candle;

38 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

the fire will not stop with the destruction
of his coat. And so, mean as it was, in the
olden days, when bears were as common
in California as cows are now, men used
to take advantage of this fear and kindle
pine-quill fires in and around his haunts
in the head of canyons to drive him out
and down and into ambush.

Read two or three chapters here between
the lines — lots of plans, preparations, dia-
grams. I was to hide near camp and wait
—to place the crescent of pine-quill fires
and all that. Then at twilight they all
went out and away on the mountain sides
around the head of the canyon, and I hid
behind a big rock near by the extinguished
camp-fire, with my old muzzle-loading Ken-
tucky rifle, lifting my eyes away up and
around to the head of the Manzanita can-
yon looking for the fires. A light! One,
two, three, ten! A sudden crescent of
forked flames, and all the fight and im-
petuosity of a boy of only a dozen years
was uppermost, and I wanted a bear!

MY FIRST GRIZZLY. 39

All alone I waited ; got hot, cold, thirsty,
cross as a bear and so sick of sitting there
that I was about to go to my blankets, for
the flames had almost died out on the hills,
leaving only a circle of little dots and dying
embers, like a fading diadem on the mighty
lifted brow of the glorious Manzanita
mountain. And now the new moon came,
went softly and sweetly by, like a shy,
sweet maiden, hiding down, down out of
sight.

Crash! His head was thrown back, not
over his shoulder, as you may read but
never see, but down by his left foot, as he
looked around and back up the brown
mountain side. He had stumbled, or
rather, he had stepped on himself, for a
bear gets down hill sadly. If a bear ever
gets after you, you had better do down
hill and go down hill fast. It will make
him mad, but that is not your affair. I
never saw a bear go down hill in a good
humor. What nature meant by making a
bear so short in the arms I don't know.

40 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

Indians say he was first a man and walked
upright with a club on his shoulder, but
sinned and fell. As evidence of this, they
show that he can still stand up and fight
with his fists when hard pressed, but more
of this later on.

This huge brute before me looked almost
white in the tawny twilight as he stumbled
down through the steep tangle of cha-
parral into the opening on the stony bar
of the river.

He had evidently been terribly tangled
up and disgusted while in the bush and
jungle, and now, well out of it, with the
foamy, rumbling, roaring Sacramento
River only a few rods beyond him, into
which he could plunge with his glossy coat,
he seemed to want to turn about and shake
his huge fists at the crescent of fire in the
pine-quills that had driven him down the
mountain. He threw his enormous bulk
back on his haunches and rose up, and
rose up, and rose up! Oh, the majesty of
this king of our continent, as he seemed

MY FIRST GRIZZLY. 41

to still keep rising! Then he turned slowly
around on his great hinder feet to look
back; he pushed his nose away out, then
drew it back, twisted his short, thick neck,
like that of a beer-drinking German, and
then for a final observation he tiptoed up,
threw his high head still higher in the air
and wiggled it about and sniffed and
sniffed and — bang!

I shot at him from ambush, with his
back toward me, shot at his back! For
shame! Henry Highton would not have
done that; nor, indeed, would I or any
other real sportsman do such a thing now ;
but I must plead the "Baby Act," and all
the facts, and also my sincere penitence,
and proceed.

The noble brute did not fall, but let him-
gelf down with dignity and came slowly
forward. Hugely, ponderously, solemnly,
he was coming. And right here, if I should
set down what I thought about — where
father was, the soldiers, anybody, every-
body else, whether I had best just fall on

42 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

my face and "play possum" and put in a
little prayer or two on the side, like — well,
I was going on to say that if I should write
all that flashed and surged through my
mind in the next three seconds, you would
be very tired. I was certain I had not hit
the bear at all. As a rule, you can always
see the "fur fly," as hunters put it; only it
is not fur, but dust, that flies.

But this bear was very fat and hot, and
so there could have been no dust to fly.
After shuffling a few steps forward and
straight for the river, he suddenly surged
up again, looked all about, just as before,
then turned his face to the river and me,
the tallest bear that ever tiptoed up and up
and up in the Sierras. One, two, three
steps — on came the bear! and my gun
empty! Then he fell, all at once and all in
a heap. No noise, no moaning or groaning
at all, no clutching at the ground, as men
have seen Indians and even white men do;
as if they would hold the earth from pass-
ing away — nothing of that sort. He lay

MY FIRST GRIZZLY. 43

quite still, head down hill, on his left side,
gave just one short, quick breath, and then,
pulling up his great right paw, he pushed
his nose and eyes under it, as if to shut out
the light forever, or, inaybe, to muffle up
his face as when "great C^sar fell."

And that was all. I had killed a grizzly
bear; nearly as big as the biggest ox.

IV.

TWIN BABIES.

These twin babies were black. They
were black as coal. Indeed, they were
blacker than coal, for they glistened in
their oily blackness. They were young baby
bears; and so exactly alike that no one
could, in any way, tell the one from the
other. And they were orphans. They
had been found at the foot of a small cedar
tree on the banks of the Sacramento River,
near the now famous Soda Springs, found
by a tow-headed boy who was very fond
of bears and hunting.

But at the time the twin babies were
found Soda Springs was only a wild camp,
or way station, on the one and only trail
that wound through the woods and up and
down mountains for hundreds of miles,
connecting the gold fields of California
with the pastoral settlements away to the

44

He threw his enormous bulk back on his haunches, and rose up.— Page 40.

TWIN BABIES. 45

north in Oregon. But a railroad has now
taken the place of that tortuous old pack-
trail, and you can whisk through these wild
and woody mountains, and away on down
through Oregon and up through Washing-
ton, Montana, Dakota, Minnesota, Wiscon-
sin and on to Chicago without even once
getting out of your car, if you like. Yet
such a persistent ride is not probable, for
fish, pheasants, deer, elk, and bear still
abound here in their ancient haunts, and
the temptation to get out and fish or hunt
is too great to be resisted.

This place where the baby bears were
found was first owned by three men
or, rather, by two men and a boy. One
of the men was known as Mountain Joe.
He had once been a guide in the service of
General Fremont, but he was now a
drunken fellow and spent most of his time
at the trading post, twenty miles down the
river. He is now an old man, almost blind,
and lives in Oregon City, on a pension re-
ceived as a soldier of the Mexican war. The

46 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

other man's name was Sil Reese. He, also,
is living and famously rich — as rich as he
is stingy, and that is saying that hf is very
rich indeed.

The boy preferred the trees to the house,
partly because it was more pleasant and
partly because Sil Reese, who had a large
nose and used it to talk with constantly,
kept grumbling because the boy, who had
been wounded in defending the ranch, waft
not able to work — wash the dishes, make
fires and so on, and help in a general and
particular way about the so-called "Sodi
Spring Hotel." This Sil Eeese was cei»-
tainly a mean man, as has, perhaps, been
set down in this sketch before.

The baby bears were found asleep, and
alone. How they came to be there, and,
above all, how they came to be left long
enough alone by their mother for a feeble
boy to rush forward at sight of them, catch
them up in his arms and escape with them,
will always be a wonder. But this one
thing is certain, you had about as well

TWIN BABIES. 47

take up two rattlesnakes in your arms as
two baby bears, and hope to get off un-
harmed, if the mother of the young bears
is within a mile of you. This boy, however,
had not yet learned caution, and he prob-
ably was not born with much fear in his
make-up. And then he was so lonesome,
and this man Reese was so cruel and so
cross, with his big nose like a sounding
fog-horn, that the boy was glad to get even
a bear to love and play with.

They, so far from being frightened or
cross, began to root around under his arms
and against his breast, like little pigs, for
something to eat. Possibly their mother
had been killed by hunters, for they were
nearly famished. When he got them home,
how they did eat ! This also made Sil Reese
mad. For, although the boy, wounded as
he was, managed to shoot down a deer not
too far from the house almost every day,
and so kept the "hotel" in meat, still it
made Reese miserable and envious to see

48 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

the boy so happy with his sable and woolly
little friends. Reese was simply mean!

Before a month the little black boys be-
gan to walk erect, carry stick muskets,
wear paper caps, and march up and down
before the door of the big log "hotel" like
soldiers.

But the cutest trick they learned was
that of waiting on the table. With little
round caps and short white aprons, the
little black boys would stand behind the
long bench on which the guests sat at the
pine board table and pretend to take orders
with all the precision and solemnity of
Southern negroes.

Of course, it is to be confessed that they
often dropped things, especially if the least
bit hot; but remember we had only tin
plates and tin or iron dishes of all sorts,
so that little damage was done if a dish
did happen to fall and rattle down on the
earthen floor.

Men came from far and near and often

TWIN BABIES. 49

lingered all day to see these cunning and
intelligent creatures perform.

About this time Mountain Joe fought a
duel with another mountaineer down at
the trading post, and this duel, a bloodless
and foolish affair, was all the talk. Why
not have the little black fellows fight a
duel also? They were surely civilized
enough to fight now!

And so, with a very few days' training,
they fought a duel exactly like the one in
which poor, drunken old Mountain Joe was
engaged ; even to the detail of one of them
suddenly dropping his stick gun and run-
ning away and falling headlong in a pros-
pect hole.

When Joe came home and saw this duel
and saw what a fool he had made of him-
self, he at first was furiously angry. But
it made him sober, and he kept sober for
half a year. Meantime Reese was mad as
ever, more mad, in fact, than ever before.
For he could not endure to see the boy have
any friends of any kind. Above all, he did

50 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

not want Mountain Joe to stay at home
or keep sober. He wanted to handle all
the money and answer no questions. A
drunken man and a boy that he could bully
suited him A best. Ah, but this man Reese
was a mean fellow, as has been said a time
or two before.

As winter came on the two blacks were
fat as pigs and fully half-grown. Their ap-
petites increased daily, and so did the
anger and envy of Mr. Sil Reese.

"They'll eat us out o' house and hum,"
said the big, towering nose one day, as the
snow began to descend and close up the
pack trails. And then the stingy man pro-
posed that the blacks should be made to
hibernate, as others of their kind. There
was a big, hollow log that had been sawed
off in joints to make bee gums; and the
stingy man insisted that they should be
put in there with a tight head, and a pack
of hay for a bed, and nailed up till spring
to save provisions.

Soon there was an Indian outbreak.

TWIN BABIES. 51

Some one from the ranch, or "hotel," must
go with the company of volunteers that
was forming down at the post for a winter
campaign. Of course Reese would not go.
He wanted Mountain Joe to go and get
killed. But Joe was sober now and he
wanted to stay and watch Reese.

And that is how it came about that the
two black babies were tumbled headlong
into a big, black bee gum, or short, hollow
log, on a heap of hay, and nailed up for
the winter. The boy had to go to the war.

It was late in the spring when the boy,
having neglected to get himself killed, to
the great disgust of Mr. Sil Reese, rode
down and went straight up to the big black
bee gum in the back yard. He put his ear
to a knothole. Not a sound. He tethered
his mule, came back and tried to shake the
short, hollow log. Not a sound or sign or
movement of any kind. Then he kicked the
big black gum with all his might. Nothing.
Rushing to the wood-pile, he caught up
an ax and in a moment had the whole end

52 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

of the big gum caved in, and, to his infinite
delight, out rolled the twins!

But they were merely the ghosts of them-
selves. They had been kept in a month
or more too long, and were now so weak
and so lean that they could hardly stand
on their feet.

"Kill 'em and put 'em out o' misery,"
said Reese, for run from him they really
could not, and he came forward and kicked
one of them flat down on its face as it was
trying hard to stand on its four feet.

The boy had grown some; besides, he
was just from the war and was now strong
and well. He rushed up in front of Reese,
and he must have looked unfriendly, for Sil
Reese tried to smile, and then at the same
time he turned hastily to go into the house.
And when he got fairly turned around,
the boy kicked him precisely where he had
kicked the bear. And he kicked him hard,
so hard that he pitched forward on his face
just as the bear had done. He got up
quickly, but he did not look back. He

TWIN BABIES. 53

seemed to have something to do in the
house.

In a month the babies, big babies now,
were sleek and fat. It is amazing how these
creatures will eat after a short nap of a
few months, like that. And their cunning
tricks, now! And their kindness to their
master! Ah! their glossy black coats and
their brilliant black eyes!

And now three men came. Two of these
men were Italians from San Francisco.
The third man was also from that city,
but he had an amazing big nose and re-
fused to eat bear meat. He thought it was
pork.

They took tremendous interest in the big
black twins, and stayed all night and till
late next day, seeing them perform.

"Seventy-five dollars," said one big nose
to the other big nose, back in a corner
where they thought the boy did not hear.

"One hundred and fifty. You see, I'll
have to give my friends fifty each. Yes,
it's true I've took care of 'em all winter,

54 TEUE BEAE STOEIES.

but I ain't mean, and I'll only keep fifty
of it."

The boy, bursting with indignation, ran
to Mountain Joe with what he had heard.
But poor Joe had been sober for a long
time, and his eyes fairly danced in delight
at having $50 in his own hand and right
to spend it down at the post.

And so the two Italians muzzled the big>
pretty pets and led them kindly down the
trail toward the city, where they were to
perform in the streets, the man with the
big nose following after the twins on a big
white mule.

And what became of the big black twin
babies? They are still performing, seem
content and happy, sometimes in a circus,
sometimes in a garden, sometimes in the
street. They are great favorites and have
never done harm to anyone.

A.nd what became of Sil Reese? Well,
as said before, he still lives, is very rich
and very miserable. He met the boy — the
bo Y that was — on the street the other day

TWIN BABIES. 55

and wanted to talk of old times. He told
the boy he ought to write something about
the old times and put him, Sil Reese, in it.
He said, with that same old sounding nose
and sickening smile, that he wanted the
boy to be sure and put his, Sil Reese's
name, in it so that he could show it to his
friends. And the boy has done so.

The boy? You want to know what the
boy is doing? Well, in about a second he
will be signing his autograph to the bot-
tom of this story about his twin babies.

V.

IN SWIMMING WITH A BEAR.

What made these ugly rows of scars on
my left hand?

Well, it might have been buckshot; only
it wasn't. Besides, buckshot would be scat-
tered about, "sort of promiscuous like," as
backwoodsmen say. But these ugly little
holes are all in a row, or rather in two
rows. Now a wolf might have made these
holes with his fine white teeth, or a bear
might have done it with his dingy and
ugly teeth, long ago. I must here tell you
that the teeth of a bear are not nearly so
fine as the teeth of a wolf. And the teeth
of a lion are the ugliest of them all. They
are often broken and bent; and they are
always of a dim yellow color. It is from
this yellow hue of the lion's teeth that we
have the name of one of the most famous
early flowers of May: dent de lion, tooth

56

SWIMMING WITH A BEAR. 57

of the lion; dandelion. Get down your
botany, now, find the Anglo- Asian name of
the flower, and fix this fact on your mind
before you read further.

I know of three men, all old men now,
who have their left hands all covered with
scars. One is due to the wolf; the others
owe their scars to the red mouths of black
bears.

You see, in the old days, out here in Cal-
ifornia, when the Sierras were full of bold
young fellows hunting for gold, quite a
number of them had hand-to-hand battles
with bears. For when we came out here
"the woods were full of 'em."

Of course, the first thing a man does
when he finds himself face to face with a
bear that won't run and he has no gun —
and that is always the time when he finds
a bear — why, he runs, himself; that is, if
the bear will let him.

But it is generally a good deal like the
old Crusader who "caught a Tartar" long

58 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

ago, when on his way to capture Jerusa-
lem, with Peter the Hermit.

"Come on!" cried Peter to the helmeted
and knightly old Crusader, who sat his
horse with Jance in rest on a hill a little in
the rear. "Come on!"

"I can't! I've caught a Tartar."

"Well, bring him along."

"He won't come."

"Well, then, come without him."

"He won't let me."

And so it often happened in the old days
out here, When a man "caught" his bear
and didn't have his gun he had to fight
it out hand-to-hand. But fortunately, every
man at all times had a knife in his belt.
A knife never gets out of order, never
"snaps," and a man in those days always
had to have it with him to cut his food,
cut brush, "crevice" for gold, and so on.

Oh! it is a grim picture to see a young
fellow in his red shirt wheel about, when
he can't run, thrust out his left hand, draw
his knife with his right, and so, breast to

SWIMMING WITH A BEAR. 59

breast, with the bear erect, strike and
strike and strike to try to reach his heart
before his left hand is eaten off to the el-
bow!

We have five kinds of bears in the Sier-
ras. The "boxer," the "biter," the "hug-
ger," are the most conspicuous. The other
two are a sort of "all round" rough and
tumble style of fighters.

The grizzly is the boxer. A game old
beast he is, too, and would knock down all
the John L. Sullivans you could put in the
Sierras faster than you could set them up.
He is a kingly old fellow and disdains fa-
miliarity. Whatever may be said to the
contrary, he never "hugs" if he has room
to box. In some desperate cases he has
been known to bite, but ordinarily he obeys
"the rules of the ring."

The cinnamon bear is a lazy brown
brute, about one-half the size of the grizzly.
He always insists on being very familiar,
if not affectionate. This is the "hugger."

Next in order comes the big, sleek, black

5

60 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

bear; easily tamed, too lazy to fight, unless
forced to it. But when "cornered" he fights
well, and, like a lion, bites to the bone.

After this comes the small and quarrel-
some black bear with big ears, and a white
spot on his breast. I have heard hunters
say, but I don't quite believe it, that he
sometimes points to this white spot on his
breast as a sort of Free Mason's sign, as if
to say, "Don't shoot." Next in order comes
the smaller black bear with small ears. He
is ubiquitous, as well as omniverous;
gets into pig-pens, knocks over your bee-
hives, breaks open your milk-house, eats
more than two good-sized hogs ought to
eat, and is off for the mountain top before
you dream he is about. The first thing you
see in the morning, however, will be some
muddy tracks on the door steps. For he
always comes and snuffles and shuffles and
smells about the door in a good-natured
sort of way, and leaves his card. The fifth
member of the great bear family is not

SWIMMING WITH A BEAR. 61

much bigger than an ordinary dog; but he
is numerous, and he, too, is a nuisance.

Dog? Why not set the dog on him? Let
me tell you. The California dog is a lazy,
degenerate cur. He ought to be put with
the extinct animals. He devotes his time
and his talent to the flea. Not six months
ago I saw a coon, on his way to my fish-pond
in the pleasant moonlight, walk within
two feet of my dog's nose and not disturb
his slumbers.

We hope that it is impossible ever to
have such a thing as hydrophobia in Cali-
fornia. But as our dogs are too lazy to
bite anything, we have thus far been un-
able to find out exactly as to that.

This last-named bear has a big head and
small body; has a long, sharp nose and
longer and sharper teeth than any of the
others; he is a natural thief, has low in-
stincts, carries his nose close to the ground,
and, wherever possible, makes his road
along on the mossy surface of fallen trees

in humid forests. He eats fish — dead and
s

62 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

decaying salmon — in guch abundance that
his flesh is not good in the salmon season.

It was with this last described specimen
of the bear family that a precocions old
boy who had hired out to some horse drov-
ers, went in swimming years and years
ago. The two drovers had camped to re-
cruit and feed their horses on the wild
grass and clover that grew at the headwa-
ters of the Sacramento River, close up un-
der the foot of Mount Shasta. A pleasant
spot it was, in the pleasant summer
weather.

This warm afternoon the two men saun-
tered leisurely away up Soda Creek to
where their horses were grazing belly deep
in grass and clover. They were slow to
return, and the boy, as all boys will, began
to grow restless. He had fished, he had
hunted, had diverted himself in a dozen
ways, but now he wanted something new.
He got it.

A little distance below camp could be
seen, through the thick foliage that hung

SWIMMING WITH A BEAR. 63

and swung and bobbed above the swift
waters, a long, mossy log that lay far out
and far above the cool, swift river.

Why not go down through the trees and
go out on that log, take off his clothes,
dangle his feet, dance on the moss, do any-
thing, everything that a boy wants to do?

In two minutes the boy was out on the
big, long, mossy log, kicking his boots off,
and in two minutes more he was dancing
up and down on the humid, cool moss, and
as naked as the first man, when he was
first made.

And it was very pleasant. The great,
strong river splashed and dashed and
boomed below; above him the long green
branches hung dense and luxuriant and
almost within reach. Far off and away
through their shifting shingle he caught
glimpses of the bluest of all blue gkies.
And a little to the left he gaw gleaming
in the sun and almost overhead the ever-
lasting snows of Mount Shasta.

Putting his boots and his clothes all

64 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

carefully in a heap, that nothing might roll
off into the water, he walked, or rather
danced on out to where the further end
of the great fallen tree lay lodged on a
huge boulder in the middle of the swift
and surging river. His legs dangled down
and he patted his plump thighs with great
satisfaction. Then he leaned over and saw
some gold and silver trout, then he flopped
over and lay down on his breast to get a
better look at them. Then he thought he
heard something behind him on the other
end of the log! He pulled himself together
quickly and stood erect, face about. There
was a bear! It was one of those mean,
sneaking, long-nosed, ant-eating little fel-
lows, it is true, but it was a bear! And a
bear is a bear to a boy, no matter about
his size, age or character. The boy stood
high up. The boy's bear stood up. And
the boy's hair stood up!

The bear had evidently not seen the boy
yet. But it had smelled his boots and
clothes, and had got upon his dignity. But

SWIMMING WITH A BEAR. 65

now, dropping down on all fours, with nose
close to the mossy butt of the log, it slowly
shuffled forward.

That boy was the stillest boy, all this
time, that has ever been. Pretty soon the
bear reached the clothes. He stopped, sat
down, nosed them about as a hog might,
and then slowly and lazily got up; but with
a singular sort of economy of old clothes,
for a bear, he did not push anything off
into the river.

What next? Would he come any farther?
Would he? Could he? Will he? The long,
sharp little nose was once more to the moss
and sliding slowly and surely toward the
poor boy's naked shins. Then the boy shiv-
ered and settled down, down, down on his
haunches, with his little hands clasped till
he was all of a heap.

He tried to pray, but somehow or an-
other, all he could think of as he sat there
crouched down with all his clothes off was:

"Now I lay me down to sleep."

66 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

But all this could not last The bear
was almost on him in half a minute, al-
though he did not lift his nose six inches
till almost within reach of the boy's toes.
Then the surprised bear suddenly stood up
and began to look the boy in the face. As
the terrified youth sprang up, he thrust out
his left hand as a guard and struck the
brute with all his might between the eyes
with the other. But the left hand lodged
in the two rows of sharp teeth and the boy
and bear rolled into the river together.

But they were together only an instant.
The bear, of course, could not breathe with
his mouth open in the water, and so had to
let go. Instinctively, or perhaps because
his course lay in that direction, the bear
struck out, swimming "dog fashion," for
the farther shore. And as the boy certainly
had no urgent business on that side of the
river he did not follow, but kept very still,
clinging to the moss on the big boulder
till the bear had shaken the water from his
coat and disappeared in the thicket.

SWIMMING WITH A BEAE. 67

Then the boy, pale and trembling from
fright and the loss of blood, climbed up
the broken end of the log, got his clothes,
struggled into them as he ran, and so
reached camp.

And he had not yelled! He tied up his
hand in a piece of old flour sack, all by him-
self, for the men had not yet got back;
and he didn't whimper! And what became
of the boy? you ask.

The boy grew up as all energetic boys
do; for there seems to be a sort of special
providence for such boys

And where is he now?

Out in California, trapping bear in the
winter and planting olive trees in their sea-
son.

And do I know him?

Yes, pretty well, almost as well as any
old fellow can know himself.

VI.

A FAT LITTLE EDITOR AND THEEE
LITTLE "BROWNS."

Mount Sinai, Heart of the Sierras — this
place is one mile east and a little less than
one mile perpendicular from the hot, dusty
and dismal little railroad town down on
the rocky banks of the foaming and tum-
bling Sacramento River. Some of the old
miners are down there still — still working
on the desolate old rocky bars with rock-
ers. They have been there, some of them,
for more than thirty years. A few of them
have little orchards, or vineyards, on the
steep, overhanging hills, but there is no
home life, no white women to speak of, as
yet. The battered and gray old miners are
poor, lonely and discouraged, but they are
honest, stout-hearted still, and of a much
higher type than those that hang about the
towns. It is hot down on the river — too

68

A FAT LITTLE EDITOR. 69

hot, almost, to tell the truth. Even here
under Mount Shasta, in her sheets of eter-
nal snow, the mercury is at par.

This Mount Sinai is not a town; it is a
great spring of cold water that leaps from
the high, rocky front of a mountain which
we have located as a summer home in the
Sierras — myself and a few other scribes of
California.

This is the great bear land. One of our
party, a simple-hearted and honest city ed-
itor, who was admitted into our little
mountain colony because of his boundless
good nature and native goodness, had
never seen a bear before he came here. City
editors do not, as a rule, ever know much
about bears. This little city editor is bald-
headed, bow-legged, plain to a degree. And
maybe that is why he is so good. "Give
me fat men," said Caesar.

But give me plain men for good men, any
time. Pretty women are to be preferred;
but pretty men? Bah! I must get on with
the bear, however, and make a long story

70 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

a short story. We found our fat, bent-
legged editor from the city fairly broiling
in the little railroad town, away down at
the bottom of the hill in the yellow golden
fields of the Sacramento; and he was so
limp and so lazy that we had to lay hold
of him and get him out of the heat and up
into the heart of the Sierras by main force.
Only one hour of climbing and we got
up to where the little mountain streams
come tumbling out of snow-banks on every
side. The Sacramento, away down below
and almost under us, from here looks
dwindled to a brawling brook; a foamy
white thread twisting about the boulders
as big as meeting houses, plunging for-
ward, white with fear, as if glad to get
away — as if there was a bear back there
where it came from. We did not register.
No, indeed. This place here on Square
Creek, among the clouds, where the water
bursts in a torrent from the living rock,
we have named Mount Sinai. We own the
whole place for one mile square — the tall

A FAT LITTLE EDITOB. 71

pine trees, the lovely pine-wood houses;
all, all. We proposed to hunt and fish,
for food. But we had some bread, some
bacon, lots of coffee and sugar. And so,
whipping out our hooks and lines, we set
off with the editor up a little mountain
brook, and in less than an hour were far
up among the fields of eternal snow, and
finely loaded with trout.

What a bed of pine quills! What long
and delicious cones for a camp fire ! Some
of those sugar-pine cones are as long as
your arm. One of them alone will make a
lofty pyramid of flame and illuminate the
scene for half a mile about. I threw my-
self on my back and kicked up my heels.
I kicked care square in the face. Oh, what
freedom ! How we would rest after dinner
here! Of course we could not all rest or
sleep at the same time. One of us would
have to keep a pine cone burning all the
time. Bears are not very numerous out
here; but the California lion is both numer-
ous and large here. The wild-cat, too, is

72 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

no friend to the tourist. But we were not
tourists. The land was and is ours. We
would and all could defend our own.

The sun was going down. Glorious! The
shades of night were coming up out of the
gorges below and audaciously pursuing
the dying sun. Not a sound. Not a sign
of man or of beast. We were scattered all
up and down the hill.

Crash! Something came tearing down
the creek through the brush ! The fat and
simple-hearted editor, who had been dress-
ing the homeopathic dose of trout, which
inexperience had marked as his own,
sprang up from the bank of the tumbling
little stream above us and stood at his full
height. His stout little knees for the first
time smote together. I was a good way
below him on the steep hillside. A brother
editor was slicing bacon on a piece of re-
versed pine bark close by

"Fall down," I cried, "fall flat down on
your face."

It was a small she bear, and she was very

A FAT LITTLE EDITOK. 73

thin and very hungry, with cubs at her
heels, and she wanted that fat little city
editor's fish. I know it would take
volumes to convince you that I really
meant for the bear to pass by him and
come after me and my friend with both
fish and bacon, and so, with half a line, I
assert this truth and pass on. Nor was 1
in any peril in appropriating the little
brown bear to myself. Any man who
knows what he is about is as safe with a
bear on a steep hillside as is the best bull-
fighter in any arena. No bear can keep his
footing on a steep hillside, much less fight.
And whenever an Indian is in peril he al-
ways takes down hill till he comes to a
steep plane, and then lets the bear almost
overtake him, when he suddenly steps aside
and either knifes the bear to the heart or
lets the open-mouthed beast go on down
the hill, heels over head.

The fat editor turned his face toward
me, and it was pale. "What! Lie down
and be eaten up while you lie there and

74 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

kick up your heels and enjoy yourself?
Never. We will die together!" he shouted.
He started for me as fast as his short
legs would allow. The bear struck at him
with her long, rattling claws. He landed
far below me, and when he got up he
hardly knew where he was or what he was.
His clothes were in shreds, the back and
bottom parts of them. The bear caught at
his trout and was gone in an instant back
with her two little cubs, and a moment
later the little family had dined and was
away, over the hill. She was a cinnamon
bear, not much bigger than a big, yellow
dog, and almost as lean and mean and hun-
gry as any wolf could possibly be. We
helped our inexperienced little friend
slowly down to camp, forgetting all about
the bacon and the fish till we came to the
little board house, where we had coffee.
Of course the editor could not go to the
table now. He leaned, or rather sat, against
a pine, drar.k copious cups of coffee and
watched the stars, while I heaped up great

A FAT LITTLE EDITOK. 75

piles of leaves and built a big fire, and so
night rolled by in all her starry splendor
as the men slept soundly all about beneath
the lordly pines. But alas for the fat little
editor; he did not like the scenery, and he
would not stay. We saw him to the sta-
tion on his way back to his little sanctum.
He said he was satisfied. He had seen the
"bar." His last words were, as he pulled
himself close together in a modest corner
in the car and smiled feebly: "Say, boys,
you won't let it get in the papers, will
you?"

VII.
TREEING A BEAR.

Away back in the "fifties" bears were as
numerous on the banks of the Willamette
River, in Oregon, as are hogs in the hick-
ory woods of Kentucky in nut time, and
that is saying that bears were mighty
plenty in Oregon about forty years ago.

You see, after the missionaries estab-
lished their great cattle ranches in Oregon
and gathered the Indians from the wilder-
ness and set them to work and fed them
on beef and bread, the bears had it all
their own way, till they literally overran
the land. And this gave a great chance for
sport to the sons of missionaries and the
sons of new settlers "where rolls the Ore-
gon."

And it was not perilous sport, either,
for the grizzly was rarely encountered

76

TREEING A BEAR. 77

Aere. His home was further to the south.
Neither was the large and clumsy cinna-
mon bear abundant on the banks of the
beautiful Willamette in those dear old
days, when you might ride from sun
to sun, belly deep in wild flowers, and
never see a house. But the small black
bear, as indicated before, was on deck in
great force, at all times and in nearly all
places.

It was the custom in those days for boys
to take this bear with the lasso, usually on
horseback.

We would ride along close to the dense
woods that grew by the river bank, and,
getting between him and his base of re-
treat, would, as soon as we sighted a bear
feeding out in the open plain, swing oui
lassos and charge him wTith whoop and
yell. His habit of rearing up and stand-
ing erect and looking about to see what
was the matter made him an easy prey to
the lasso. And then the fun of taking bin?
home through the long, strong grass!

78 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

As a rule, he did not show fight when
once in the toils of the lasso; but in a few
hours, making the best of the situation like
a little philosopher, he would lead along
like a dog.

There were, of course, exceptions to this
exemplary conduct.

On one occasion particularly, Ed Parish,
the son of a celebrated missionary, came
near losing his life by counting too con-
fidently on the docility of a bear which he
had taken with a lasso and was leading
home.

His bear suddenly stopped, stood up
and began to haul in the rope, hand over
hand, just like a sailor. And as the other
end of the rope was fastened tightly to the
big Spanish pommel of the saddle, why
of course the distance between the bear
and the horse soon grew perilously
short, and Ed Parish slid from his horse's
back and took to the brush, leaving horse
and bear to fight it out as best they could.

When he came back, with some boys to

TREEING A BEAR. 79

help him, the horse was dead and the bear
was gone, having cut the rope with his
teeth.

After having lost his horse in this way,
poor little Ed Parish had to do his hunting
on foot, and, as my people were immigrants
and very poor, why we, that is my brother
and I, were on foot also. This kept us three
boys together a great deal, and many a pe-
culiar adventure we had in those dear days
"when all the world was young."

Ed Parish was nearly always the hero
of our achievements, for he was a bold,
enterprising fellow, who feared nothing at
all. In fact, he finally lost his life from
his very great love of adventure. But this
is too sad to tell now, and we must be con-
tent with the story about how he treed a
hear for the present.

We three boys had gone bear hunting
up a wooded canyon near his father's ranch
late one warm summer afternoon. Ed had
a gun, but, as I said before, my people were
very poor, so neither brother nor I as yet

80 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

had any other arms or implements than the
inseparable lasso.

Ed, who was always the captain in such
cases, chose the center of the dense, deep
canyon for himself, and, putting my
brother on the hillside to his right and my-
self on the hillside to his left, ordered a
simultaneous "Forward march."

After a time we heard him shoot. Then
we heard him shout. Then there was a
long silence.

Then suddenly, high and wild, his voice
rang out through the tree tops down in
the deep canyon.

"Come down! Come quick! I've treed
a bear! Come and help me catch him;
come quick! Oh, Moses! come quick, and
— and — and catch him!"

My brother came tearing down the
steep hill on his side of the canyon as I de-
scended from my side. We got down about
the same time, but the trees in their dense
foliage, together with the compact under-

TEEEING A BEAB. 81

brush, concealed everything. We could see
neither bear nor boy.

This Oregon is a damp country, warm
and wet; nearly always moist and humid,
and so the trees are covered with moss.
Long, gray, sweeping moss swings from the
broad, drooping boughs of fir and pine and
cedar and nearly every bit of sunlight is
shut out in these canyons from one year's
end to the other. And it rains here nearly
half of the year; and then these densely
wooded canyons are as dark as caverns. I
know of nothing so grandly gloomy as
these dense Oregon woods in ttiis long
rainy season.

I laid my ear to the ground after I got
a glimpse of my brother on the other side
of the canyon, but could hear nothing at all
but the beating of my heart.

Suddenly there was a wild yell away up
in the dense boughs of a big mossy maple
tree that leaned over toward my side of
the canyon. I looked and looked with
eagerness, but could see nothing whatever.

82 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

Then again came the yell from the top
of the big leaning maple. Then there was
a moment of silence, and then the cry: "Oh,
Moses! Why don't you come, I say, and
help me catch him?" By this time I could
see the leaves rustling. And I could see
the boy rustling, too.

And just behind him was a bear. He
had treed the bear, sure enough!

My eyes gradually grew accustomed to
the gloom and density, and I now saw the
red mouth of the bear amid the green foli-
age high overhead. The bear had already
pulled off one of Ed's boots and was about
making a bootjack of his big red mouth
for the other.

"Why don't you come on, I say, and help
me catch him?"

He kicked at the bear, and at the same
time hitched himself a little further along
up the leaning trunk, and in doing so
kicked his remaining boot into the bear's
mouth.

TEEEING A BEAR. 83

"Oh, Moses, Moses! Why don't you
come? I've got a bear, I tell you."

"Where is it, Ed?" shouted my brother
on i he other side.

But Ed did not tell him, for he had not
yet got his foot from the bear's mouth,
and was now too busy to do anything else
but yell and cry "Oh, Moses!"

Then my brother and I shouted out to
Ed at the same time. This gave him great
courage. He said something like "Con-
found you!" to the bear, and getting his
foot loose without losing the boot he kicked
the bear right on the nose. This brought
things to a standstill. Ed hitched along
a little higher up, and as the leaning trunk
of the tree was already bending under his
own and the bear's weight, the infuriated
brute did not seem disposed to go further.
Besides, as he had been mortally wounded,
he was probably growing too weak to do
much now.

My brother got to the bottom of the
canyon and brought Ed's gun to where I

84 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

stood. But, as we had no powder or bul-
lets, and as Ed could not get them to us,
even if he would have been willing to risk
our shooting at the bear, it was hard to
decide what to do. It was already dusk
and we could not stay there all night.

"Boys," shouted Ed, at last, as he stead-
ied himself in the forks of a leaning and
overhanging bough, "I'm going to come
down on my laz rope. There, take that end
of it, tie your laz ropes to it and scramble
up the hill."

We obeyed him to the letter, and as we
did so, he fastened his lasso firmly to the
leaning bough and descended like a spider
to where we had stood a moment before.
We all scrambled up out of the canyon to-
gether and as quickly as possible.

When we went back next day to get our
ropes we found the bear dead near the root
of the old mossy maple. The skin was a
splendid one, and Ed insisted that my
brother and I should have it, and we gladly
accepted it.

TKEEING A BEAE. 85

My brother, who was older and wiser
than I, said that he made us take the skin
so that we would not be disposed to tell
how he had "treed a bear." But I trust
not, for he was a very generous-hearted
fellow. Anyhow, we never told the story
while he lived.

VIII.
BILL CROSS AND HIS PET BEAR.

When my father settled down at the foot
of the Oregon Sierras with his little family,
long, long years ago, it was about forty
miles from our place to the nearest civil-
ized settlement.

People were very scarce in those days,
and bears, as said before, were very plenty.
We also had wolves, wild-cats, wild cattle,
wild hogs, and a good many long-tailed and
big-headed yellow Californian lions.

The wild cattle, brought there from
Spanish Mexico, next to the bear, were
most to be feared. They had long, sharp
horns and keen, sharp hoofs. 'Nature had
gradually helped them out in these weap-
ons of defense. They had grown to be slim
and trim in body, and were as supple and
swift as deer. They were the deadly ene-

86

BILL CROSS AND HIS BEAR. 87

mies of all wild beasts; because all wild
beasts devoured their young.

When fat and saucy, in warm summer
weather, these cattle would hover along
the foothills in bands, hiding in the hol-
lows, and would begin to bellow whenever
they saw a bear or a wolf, or even a man
or boy, if on foot, crossing the wide valley
of grass and blue camas blossoms. Then
there would be music! They would start
up, with heads and tails in the air, and,
broadening out, left and right, they would
draw a long bent line, completely shutting
off their victim from all approach to the
foothills. If the unfortunate victim were
a man or boy on foot, he generally made
escape up one of the small ash trees that
dotted the valley in groves here and there,
and the cattle would then soon give up the
chase. But if it were a wolf or any other
wild beast that could not get up a
tree, the case was different. Far away,
on the other side of the valley, where
dense woods lined the banks of the wind-

88 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

ing Willamette river, the wild, bellow-
ing herd would be answered. Out from
the edge of the woods would stream,
right and left, two long, corresponding,
surging lines, bellowing and plunging for-
ward now and then, their heads to the
ground, their tails always in the air and
their eyes aflame, as if they would set fire
to the long gray grass. With the precision
and discipline of a well-ordered army, they
would close in upon the wild beast, too
terrified now to either fight or fly., and,
leaping upon him, one after another, with
their long, sharp hoofs, he would, in a little
time, be crushed into an unrecognizable
mass. Not a bone would be left unbroken.
It is a mistake to suppose that they ever
used their long, sharp horns in attack.
These were used only in defense, the same
as elk or deer, falling on the knees and re-
ceiving the enemy on their horns, much as
the Old Guard received the French in the
last terrible struggle at Waterloo.
Bill Cross was a "tender foot" at the time

BILL CEOSS AND HIS BEAR. 89

of which I write, and a sailor, at that. Now,
the old pilgrims who had dared the plains
in those days of '49, when cowards did not
venture and the weak died on the way, had
not the greatest respect for the courage or
endurance of those who had reached Ore-
gon by ship. But here was this man, a
sailor by trade, settling down in the in-
terior of Oregon, and, strangely enough,
pretending to know more about everything
in general and bears in particular than
either my father or any of his boys!

He had taken up a piece of land down
in the pretty Camas Valley where the grass
grew long and strong and waved in the
wind, mobile and beautiful as the mobile
sea.

The good-natured and self-complacent
old sailor liked to watch the waving grass.
It reminded him of the sea, I reckon. He
would sometimes sit on our little porch as
the sun went down and tell us boys
strange, wild sea stories. He had traveled
far and seen much, as much as any man

90 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

can see on water, and maybe was not a
very big liar, for a sailor, after all. We
liked his tales. He would not work, and
so he paid his way with stories of the sea.
The only thing about him that we did not
like, outside of his chronic idleness, was
his exalted opinion of himself and his un-
concealed contempt for everybody's opin-
ion but his own.

"Bill," said my father one day, "those
black Spanish cattle will get after that red
sash and sailor jacket of yours some day
when you go down in the valley to your
claim, and they won't leave a grease spot.
Better go horseback, or at least take a gun,
when you go down next time."

"Pshaw ! Squire. I wish I had as many
dollars as I ain't afeard of all the black
Spanish cattle in Oregon. Why, if they're
so blasted dangerous, how did your mis-
sionaries ever manage to drive them up
here from Mexico, anyhow?"

Still, for all that, the very next time that
he saw the old sailor setting out at his snail

BILL CROSS AND HIS BEAR. 91

pace for his ranch below, slow and indo-
lent as if on the deck of a ship, my father
insisted that he should go on horseback,
or at least take a gun.

"Pooh, pooh! I wouldn't be bothered
with a horse or a gun. Say, I'm goin' to
bring your boys a pet bear some day."

And so, cocking his little hat down over
his right eye and thrusting his big hands
into his deep pockets almost to the elbows,
he slowly and lazily whistled himself down
the gradual slope of the foothills, waist
deep in the waving grass and delicious wild
flowers, and soon was lost to sight in the
great waving sea.

Two things may be here written down.
He wouldn't ride a horse because he
couldn't, and for the same reason he
wouldn't use a gun. Again let it be writ-
ten down, also, that the reason he was
going away that warm autumn afternoon
was that there was some work to do. These
facts were clear to my kind and indulgent
father; but of course we boys never thought

92 TRUE BEAE STORIES.

of it, and laid our little shoulders to the
hard work of helping father lift up the
long, heavy poles that were to complete
the corral around our pioneer log cabin,
and we really hoped and half believed that
he might bring home a little pet bear.

This stout log corral had become an ab-
solute necessity. It was high and strong,
and made of poles or small logs stood on
end in a trench, after the fashion of a prim-
itive fort or stout stockade. There was
but one opening, and that was a very nar-
row one in front of the cabin door. Here
it was proposed to put up a gate. We also
had talked about port-holes in the corners
of the corral, but neither gate nor port-
holes were yet made. In fact, as said be-
fore, the serene and indolent man of the sea
always slowly walked away down through
the grass toward his untracked claim
whenever there was anything said about
port-holes, posts or gates.

Father and we three little boys had only
got the last post set and solidly "tamped"

BILL CEOSS AND HIS BEAR. &{

in the ground as the sun was going down.

Suddenly we heard a yell; then a yelling,
then a bellowing. The yelling was heard
in the high grass in the Camas Valley be-
low, and the bellowing of cattle came from
the woody river banks far beyond.

Then up on the brown hills of the Ore-
gon Sierras above us came the wild answer
of the wild black cattle of the hills, and
a moment later, right and left, the long
black lines began to widen out; then down
they came, like a whirlwind, toward the
black and surging line in the grass below.
We were now almost in the center of what
would, in a little time, be a complete circle
and cyclone of furious Spanish cattle.

And now, here is something curious to
relate. Our own cows, poor, weary, immi-
grant cows of only a year before, tossed
their tails in the air, pawed the ground,
bellowed and fairly went wild in the splen-
did excitement and tumult. One touch of
nature made the whole cow world kin!

Father clambered up on a "buck-horse"

94 TBTJE BEAR STORIES.

and looked out over the stockade; and then
he shouted and shook his hat and laughed
as I had never heard him laugh before. For
there, breathless, coatless, hatless, came
William Cross, Esq., two small wolves and
a very small black bear! They were all
making good time, anywhere, anyway, to
escape the frantic cattle. Father used to
say afterwards, when telling about this lit-
tle incident, that "it was nip and tuck be-
tween the four, and hard to say which was
ahead." The cattle had made quite a
"round-up."

They all four straggled in at the narrow
little gate at about the same time, the
great big, lazy sailor in a hurry, for the
first time in his life.

But think of the coolness of the man, as
he turned to us children with his first gasp
of breath, and said, "Bo — bo — boys, I've
bro — bro — brought you a little bear!"

The wolves were the little chicken
thieves known as coyotes, quite harmless,
as a rule, so far as man is concerned, but

BILL CROSS AND HIS BEAR. 95

the cattle hated them and they were terri-
fied nearly to death.

The cattle stopped a few rods from the
stockade. We let the coyotes go, but we
kept the little bear and named him Bill
Cross. Yet he was never a bit cross, de-
spite his name.

IX.
THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR.

(Ursus Ferox.)

"The Indians have unbounded reverence for this
bear. When they kill one, they make exculpating
speeches to It, smoke tobacco to it, call it grand-
father, ancestor, etc."

P. MARTIN DUNCAN, M. B., F. R. S., F. G. S.

Kings College, London.

The Indians with whom I once lived in
the Californian Sierras held the grizzly
bear in great respect and veneration. Some
writers have said that this was because
they were afraid of this terrible king of
beasts. But this is not true. The Indian,
notwithstanding his almost useless Dow
and arrow in battles with this monster,
was not controlled by fear. He venerated
the grizzly bear as his paternal ancestor.
And here I briefly set down the Modoc and
Mount Shasta Indians' account of their
own creation.

96

THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR. 97

They, as in the Biblical account of the
creation of all things, claim to have found
the woods, wild beasts, birds and all things
waiting for them, as did Adam and Eve.

The Indians say the Great Spirit made
this mountain first of all. Can you not see
how it is? they say. He first pushed down
snow and ice from the skies through a hole
which he made in the blue heavens by turn-
ing a stone round and round, till he made
this great mountain; then he stepped out
of the clouds onto the mountain-top, and
descended and planted the trees all around
by putting his finger on the ground. The
sun melted the snow, and the water ran
down and nurtured the trees and made the
rivers. After that he made the fish for the
rivers out of the small end of his staff. He
made the birds by blowing some leaves,
which he took up from the ground, among
the trees. After that he made the beasts
out of the remainder of his stick, but made
the grizzly bear out of the big end, and
made him master over all the others. He

98 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

made the grizzly so strong that he feared
him himself, and would have to go up on
top of the mountain out of sight of the for-
est to sleep at night, lest the grizzly, who,
as will be seen, was much more strong and
cunning then than now, should assail him
in his sleep. Afterwards, the Great Spirit,
wishing to remain on earth and make the
sea and some more land, converted Mount
Shasta, by a great deal of labor, into a wig-
wam, and built a fire in the center of it
and made it a pleasant home. After that,
his family came down, and they all have
lived in the mountain ever since. They say
that before the white man came they could
see the fire ascending from the mountain
by night and the smoke by day, every time
they chose to look in that direction. They
say that one late and severe springtime,
many thousand snows ago, there was a
great storm about the summit of Mount
Shasta, and that the Great Spirit sent his
youngest and fairest daughter, of whom he
was very fond, up to the hole in the top,

THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR. 99

bidding her to speak to the storm that
came up from the sea, and tell it to be
more gentle or it would blow the mountain
over. He bade her do this hastily, and not
put her head out, lest the wind should
catch her in the hair and blow her away.
He told her she should only thrust out her
long red arm and make a sign, and then
speak to the storm without.

The child hastened to the top and did
as she was bid, and was about to return,
but having never yet seen the ocean, where
the wind was born and made his home,
when it was white with the storm, she
stopped, turned and put her head out to
look that way, when lo! the storm caught
in her long red hair, and blew her out and
away down and down the mountain side.
Here she could not fix her feet in the hard,
smooth ice and snow, and so slid on and
on down to the dark belt of firs below the
snow rim.

Now, the grizzly bears possessed all the
wood and all the land down to the sea at

100 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

that time, and were very numerous and
very powerful. They were not exactly
beasts then, although they were covered
with hair, lived in caves and had sharp
claws; but they walked on two feet, and
talked, and used clubs to fight with, in-
stead of their teeth and claws, as they do
now.

At this time, there was a family of griz-
zlies living close up to the snows. The
mother had lately brought forth, and the
father was out in quest of food for the
young, when, as he returned with his club
on his shoulder and a young elk in his left
hand, under his arm, he saw this little
child, red like fire, hid under a fir-bush,
with her long hair trailing in the snows,
and shivering with fright and cold. Not
knowing what to make of her, he took her
to the old mother, who was very learned in
all things, and asked her what this fair and
frail thing was that he had found shivering
under a fir-bush in the snow. The old
mother grizzly, who had things pretty

THE GEEAT GRIZZLY BEAR. 101

much her own way, bade him leave the
child with her, but never mention it to any-
one, and she would share her breast with
her, and bring her up with the other chil-
dren, and maybe some great good would
come of it.

The old mother reared her as she prom-
ised to do, and the old hairy father went
out every day, with his club on his shoul-
der, to get food for his family, till they
were all grown up and able to do for them-
selves.

"Now," said the old mother Grizzly to
the old father Grizzly, as he stood his club
by the door and sat down one day, "our
oldest son is quite grown up and must have
a wife. Now, who shall it be but the little
red creature you found in the snow under
the black fir-bush." So the old father Griz-
zly kissed her, said she was very wise, then
took up his club on his shoulder and went
out and killed some meat for the marriage
feast.

They married and were very happy, and

102 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

many children were born to them. But,
being part of the Great Spirit and part
of the grizzly bear, these children did not
exactly resemble either of their parents,
but partook somewhat of the nature and
likeness of both. Thus was the red man
created; for these children were the first
Indians.

All the other grizzlies throughout the
black forests, even down to the sea, were
very proud and very kind, and met to-
gether, and, with their united strength,
built for the lovely little red princess a wig-
wam close to that of her father, the Great
Spirit. This is what is now called "Little
Mount Shasta."

After many years, the old mother Griz-
zly felt that she soon must die, and, fear-
ing that she had done wrong in detaining
the child of the Great Spirit, she could
not rest till she had seen him and restored
to him his long-lost treasure and asked his
forgiveness.

With this object in view, she gathered

THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR. 103

together all the grizzlies at the new and
magnificent lodge built for the princess and
her children, and then sent her eldest
grandson to the summit of Mount Shasta
in a cloud, to speak to the Great Spirit
and tell him where he could find his long-
lost daughter.

When the Great Spirit heard this, he
was so glad that he ran down the mountain
side on the south so fast and strong that
the snow was melted off in places, and the
tokens of his steps remain to this day. The
grizzlies went out to meet him by thous-
ands; and as he approached they stood
apart in two great lines, with their clubs
under their arms, and so opened a lane
through which he passed in great state to
the lodge where his daughter sat with her
children.

But when he saw the children, and
learned how the grizzlies that he had cre-
ated had betrayed him into* the creation of
a new race, he was very wroth, and
frowned on the old mother Grizzly till she

104 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

died on the spot. At this, the grizzlies all
set up a dreadful howl; but he took his
daughter on his shoulder and, turning to
all the grizzlies, bade them hold their
tongues, get down on their hands and
knees and so remain till he returned. They
did as they were bid, and he closed the
door of the lodge after him, drove all the
children out into the world, passed out and
up the mountain and never returned to the
timber any more.

So the grizzlies could not rise up any
more, or make a noise, or use their clubs,
but ever since have had to go on all-fours,
much like other beasts, except when they
have to fight for their lives; then the Great
Spirit permits them to stand up and fight
with their fists like men.

That is why the Indians about Mount
Shasta will never kill or interfere in any
way with a grizzly. Whenever one of their
number is killed by one of these kings of
the forest, he is burned on the spot, and
all who pass that way for years cast a stone

THE GREAT GRIZZLY BEAR. 105

on the place till a great pile is thrown up.
Fortunately, however, grizzlies are not now
plentiful about the mountain.

In proof of the story that the grizzly once
stood and walked erect and was much like
a man, they show that he has scarcely any
tail, and that his arms are a great deal
shorter than his legs, and that they are
more like a man than any other animal.

X.

AS A HUMORIST.

Not long ago, about the time a party of
Americans were setting out for India to
hunt the tiger, a young banker from New
York came to California to hunt what he
rightly considered the nobler beast.

He chartered a small steamer in San
Francisco Bay and taking with him a party
of friends, as well as a great-grandson of
Daniel Boone, a famous hunter, for a
guide, he sailed up the coast to the red-
wood wilderness of Humboldt. Here he
camped on the bank of a small stream in
a madrona thicket and began to hunt for
his bear. He found his bear, an old female
with young cubs* As Boone was naturally
in advance when the beast was suddenly
stumbled upon, he had to do the fighting,
and this gave the banker from the States
a chance to scramble up a small madrona.

106

Of course he dropped his gun. — Page 107.

AS A HUMORIST. 107

Of course he dropped his gun. They al-
ways do drop their guns, by some singu-
larly sad combination of accidents, when
they start up a tree with two rows of big
teeth in the rear, and it is hardly fair to
expect the young bear-hunter from New
York to prove an exception. Poor Boone
was severely maltreated by the savage old
mother grizzly in defense of her young.
There was a crashing of brush and a crush-
ing of bones, and then all was still.

Suddenly the bear seemed to remember
that there was a second party who had
been in earnest search for a bear, and look-
ing back down the trail and up in the
boughs of a small tree, she saw a pair of
boots. She left poor Boone senseless on
the ground and went for those boots. Com-
ing forward, she reared up under the tree
and began to claw for the capitalist. He
told me that she seemed to him, as she
stood there, to be about fifty feet high.
Then she laid hold of the tree.

Fortunately this madrona tree is of a

8

108 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

hard and unyielding nature, and with all
her strength she could neither break nor
bend it. But she kept thrusting up her
long nose and longer claws, laying hold
first of his boots, which she pulled off, one
after the other, with her teeth, then with
her claws she took hold of one garment
and then another till the man of money
had hardly a shred, and his legs were
streaming with blood. Fearing that he
should faint from loss of blood, he lashed!
himself to the small trunk of the tree by
his belt and then began to scream with
all his might for his friends.

When the bear became weary of clawing
up at the dangling legs she went back and
began to turn poor Boone over to see if he
showed any signs of life. Then she came
back and again clawed a while at the
screaming man up the madrona tree. It
was great fun for the bear!

To cut a thrilling story short, the party
in camp on the other side of the creek
finally came in hail, when the old bear

AS A HUMOKIST. 109

gathered up her babies and made safe exit
up a gulch. Boone, now in Arizona, was
so badly crushed and bitten that his life
was long despaired of, but he finally got
well. The bear, he informed me, showed
no disposition to eat him while turning
him over and tapping him with her foot
and thrusting her nose into his bleeding
face to see if he still breathed.

Story after story of this character could
be told to prove that the grizzly at home
is not entirely brutal and savage; but
rather a good-natured lover of his family
and fond of his sly joke.

XL

4

A GRIZZLY'S SLY LITTLE JOKE.

I know an old Indian who was terribly
frightened by an old monster grizzly and
her half-grown cub, one autumn, while out
gathering manzanita berries. But badly
as he was frightened, he was not even
scratched.

It seems that while he had his head
raised, and was busy gathering and eating
berries, he almost stumbled over an old
bear and her cub. They had eaten their fill
and fallen asleep in the trail on the wooded
hillside. The old Indian had only time to
turn on his heel and throw himself head-
long in the large end of a hollow log, which
luckily lay at hand. This, however, was
only a temporary refuge. He saw, to his
delight, that the log was open at the other
end, and corkscrewing his way along
toward the further end, he was about to

emerge, when, to his dismay, he saw the
no

A GKIZZLY'S SLY JOKE. Ill

old mother sitting down quietly waiting
for him!

After recovering his breath as best he
could in his hot and contracted quarters,
he elbowed and corkscrewed himself back
to the place by which he first entered. But
lo! the bear was there, sitting down, half
smiling, and waiting to receive him
warmly. This, the old Indian said, was
repeated time after time, till he had no
longer strength left to struggle further,
and turned on his face to die, when she
put her head in, touched the top of his head
gently with her nose and then drew back,
took her cub with her and shuffled on.

I went to the spot with the Indian a day
or two afterward, and am convinced that
his story was exactly as narrated. And
when you understand that the bear could
easily have entered the hollow log and
killed him at any time, you will see that
she had at least a faint sense of fun in
that "cat and mouse" amusement with the
frightened Indian.

XII.

THE GRIZZLY AS FREMONT FOUND
HIM.

General Fremont found this powerful
brute to be a gregarious and confiding
creature, fond of his family and not given
to disturbing those who did not disturb
him. In his report to the government—
1847 — he tells of finding a large family of
grizzly bears gathering acorns very much
as the native Indians gathered them, and
this not far from a small Mexican town.
He says that riding at the head of his
troops he saw, on reaching the brow of a
little grassy hill set with oaks, a great com-
motion in the boughs of one of the larg-
est trees, and, halting to cautiously recon-
noiter, he noticed that there were grouped
about the base of the tree and under its
wide boughs, several huge grizzlies, em-
ployed in gathering and eating the acorns
112

AS FEEMONT FOUND HIM. 113

which the baby grizzlies threw down from
the thick branches overhead. More than
this, he reports that the baby bears, on
seeing him, became frightened, and at-
tempted to descend to the ground and run
away, but the older bears, which had not
yet discovered the explorers, beat the
young ones and drove them back up the
tree, and compelled them to go on with
their work, as if they had been children.

In the early '50s, I, myself, saw the griz-
zlies feeding together in numbers under the
trees, far up the Sacramento Valley, as
tranquilly as a flock of sheep. A serene,
dignified and very decent old beast was
the full-grown grizzly as Fremont and oth-
ers found him here at home. This king
of the continent, who is quietly abdicating
his throne, has never been understood. The
grizzly was not only every inch a king, but
he had, in his undisputed dominion, a
pretty fair sense of justice. He was never
a roaring lion. He was never a man-eater.
He is indebted for his character for ferocity

114 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

almost entirely to tradition, but, in some
degree, to the female bear when seeking
to protect her young. Of course, the griz-
zlies are good fighters, when forced to it;
but as for lying in wait for anyone, like
the lion, or creeping, cat-like, as the tiger
does, into camp to carry off someone for
supper, such a thing was never heard of in
connection with the grizzly.

The grizzly went out as the American
rifle came in. I do not think he retreated.
He was a lover of home and family, and
so fell where he was born. For he
is still found here and there, all up
and down the land, as the Indian is still
found, but he is no longer the majestic and
serene king of the world. His whole life
has been disturbed, broken up; and his
temper ruined. He is a cattle thief now,
and even a sheep thief. In old age, he
keeps close to his canyon by day, deep in
the impenetrable chaparral, and at night
shuffles down hill to some hog-pen, per-
fectly careless of dogs or shots, and, tear-

AS FREMONT FOUND HIM. 115

ing out a whole side of the pen, feeds his
fill on the inmates.

One of the interior counties kept a stand-
ing reward for the capture of an old grizzly
of this character for several years. But
he defied everything and he escaped every-
thing but old age. Some hunters finally
crept in to where the old king lay, nearly
blind and dying of old age, and dispatched
him with a volley from several Winches-
ter rifles. It was found that he was almost
toothless, his paws had been terribly mu-
tilated by numerous steel traps, and it is
said that his kingly old carcass had re-
ceived nearly lead enough to sink a small
ship. There were no means of ascertain-
ing his exact weight, but it was claimed
that skin, bone and bullets, as he was
found, he would have weighed well nigh
a ton.

XIII.
THE BEAR WITH SPECTACLES.

And now let us go down to near the
mouth of the Father of Waters, to "Barra
Tarra Land" or Barren Land, as it was
called of old by Cervantes, in the kingdom of
Sancho Panza. Strange how little the
great men of the old world knew of this
new world! In one of his plays Shakes-
peare speaks of ships from Mexico; in an-
other he means to mention the Bermudas.
Burns speaks of a Newfoundland dog as

"Whelped in a country far abroad
Where boatmen gang to fish for cod,"

and Byron gets in a whole lot about Daniel
Boone; but as a rule we were ignored.

Barra Tarra, so called, is the very richest
part of this globe. It must have been rich
always, rich as the delta of the Nile; but
now, with the fertility of more than a dozen

116

BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 117

States dumped along there annually, it is
rich as cream is rich.

The fish, fowl, oysters of Barra Tarra —
ah, the oysters! No oysters in the world
like these for flavor, size and sweetness.
They are so enormous in size that — but let
me illustrate their size by an anecdote of
the war.

A Yankee captain, hungry and worn out
hewing his way with his sword from Chi-
cago to the sea, as General Logan had put
it, sat down in a French restaurant in New
Orleans, and while waiting for a plate of
the famous Barra Tarra raw oysters, saw
that a French Creole sitting at the same
little side table was turning over and over
with his fork a solitary and most tempting
oyster of enormous size, eyeing it ruefully.

"Why don't you eat him?"

"By gar! I find him too big for me. You
like?"

"Certainly. Not too big for me. See
this!" and snatching the fork from the
Frenchman the oyster was gone at a gulp.

118 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

The little Frenchman shrugged his
shoulders, looked at the gallant officer a
moment and then said in a fit of enthusi-
astic admiration:

"By gar, Monsieur Capitaine, you are
one mighty brave man ! I did try him free
times zat way, but he no stay."

The captain threw up his arms and —
his oyster ! — so runs the story.

The soil along the river bank is so rich
that weeds, woods, vines, trench close and
hard on the heels of the plowman. A
plantation will almost perish from the
earth, as it were, by a few years of aban-
donment. And so it is that you see miles
and miles on either side — parishes on top
of parishes, in fact — fast returning to bar-
barism, dragging the blacks by thousands
down to below the level of brutes with
them, as you descend from New Orleans
toward the mouth of the mighty river,
nearly one hundred miles from the beauti-
ful "Crescent City." And, ah, the super-
stition of these poor blacks!

BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 119

You see hundreds of little white houses,
old "quarters," and all tenantless now,
save one or two on each plantation. Cheap
sugar and high wages, as compared with
old times of slavery — but then the enor-
mous cost of keeping up the levees, and
above all, the continued peril to life and
property, with a mile of swift, muddy wa-
ter sweeping seaward high above your
head — these things are making a desert
of the richest lands on earth. We are gain-
ing ground in the West, but we are losing
ground in the South, the great, silent
South.

Of course, the world, we, civilization,
will turn back to this wondrous region
some day, when we have settled the West;
for the mouth of the mightiest river on
the globe is a fact; it is the mouth by
which this young nation was trained in its
younger days, and we cannot ignore it in
the end, however willing we may be to do
so now.

Strange how wild beasts and all sorts of

120 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

queer creatures are overrunning the region
down there, too, growing like weeds, in-
creasing as man decreases. I found a sort
of marsh bear here. He looks like the
sloth bear (Ursus Labiatus) of the Ganges,
India, as you see him in the Zoo of Lon-
don, only he is not a sloth, by any means.
The negroes are superstitiously afraid of
him, and their dogs, very numerous, and
good coon dogs, too, will not touch him.
His feet are large and flat, to accommo-
date him in getting over the soft ground,
while his shaggy and misshapen body is
Tery thin and light. His color is as un-
lovely as his shape — a sort of faded, dirty
brown or pale blue, with a rim of dirty
white about the eyes that makes him look
as if he wore spectacles when he stops and
looks at you.

As he is not fit to eat because he lives
on fish and oysters, sportsmen will not fire
at him; and as the poor, superstitious, voo-
doo-worshiping negroes, and their dogs,
too, run away as soon aa he is seen, he has

BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 121

quite a habit of stopping and looking at
you through his queer spectacles as long
as you are in sight. He looks to be a sort
of second-hand bear, his shaggy, faded,
dirty coat of hair looking as if he had been
stuffed, like an old sofa, with the stuffing
coming out — a very second-hand appear-
ance, to be sure.

Now, as I have always had a fondness
for skins — having slept on them and under
them all my life, making both bed and car-
pet of them — I very much wanted a skin
of this queer marsh bear which the poor
negroes both adore and dread as a sort of
devil. But, as no one liked him well enough
to kill him, I must do it myself; and with
this object, along with my duty to describe
the drowning plantations, I left New Or-
leans with Colonel Bloom, two good guns,
and something to eat and to drink, and
swept down the great river to the landing
in the outer edge of the timber belt.

And how strange this landing! As a
rule you have to climb up to the shore from

122 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

a ship. Here, after setting foot on the
levee, we walked down, down, down to
reach the level land — a vast field of fevers.

I had a letter of introduction to the
"preacher." He was a marvel of rags,
preached every day and night, up and
down the river, and received 25 cents a day
from the few impoverished white planters,
too poor to get away, for his influence for
good among the voodoo blacks. Not that
they could afford to care for the negroes,
those few discouraged and fever-stricken
planters on their plantations of weeds and
water, but they must, now and then, have
these indolent and retrograding blacks to
plant or cut down their cane, or sow and
gather their drowning patches of rice, and
the preacher could preach them into work-
ing a little, when right hungry.

The ragged black took my letter and pre-
tended to read it. Poor fellow, he could
not read, but pride, or rather vanity, made
him act a lie. Seeing the fact, I contrived
to tell him that it was from a colored cler-

The bear

there.— Page 111.

BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 123

gyman, and that I had come to get him
and his dogs to help me kill a bear. The
blacks now turned white; or at least white
around the lips. The preacher shuddered
and shrugged his shoulders and finally
groaned in his grief.

Let us omit the mosquitoes, the miser-
able babies, nude as nature, and surely
very hungry in this beauteous place of fer-
tility. They hung about my door, a "quar-
ters1' cabin with grass knee high through
the cracks in the floor, like flies, till they
got all my little store of supplies, save a big
flask of "provisions" which General Beau-
regard had given me for Colonel Bloom,
as a preventive against the deadly fever.
No, it was not whiskey, not all whiskey,
at least, for it was bitter as gall with qui-
nine. I had to help the Colonel sample
it at first, but I only helped him sample it
once. It tasted so vilely that it seemed
to me I should, as between the two, prefer
fever.

And such a moon ! The ragged minister

9

124 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

stood whooping up his numerous dogs and
gathering his sullen clan of blacks to get
that bear and that promised $5.

Away from up toward New Orleans,
winding, sweeping, surging, flashing like a
mighty sword of silver, the Father of Wa-
ters came through the air, high above our
heads and level with the topmost limit of
his artificial banks. The blacks were silent,
ugly, sullen, and so the preacher asked for
and received the five silver dollars in ad-
vance. This made me suspicious, and, out
of humor, I went into my cabin and took
Colonel Bloom into a corner and told him
what had been done. He did not say one
word but took a long drink of preventiye
against the fever, as General Beauregard
had advised and provided.

Then we set out for the woods, through
weeds that reached to our shoulders, the
negroes in a string, slow, silent, sullen and
ugly, the brave bear dogs only a little be-
hind the negroes. The preacher kept mut-
tering a monotonous prayer.

BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 125

But that moon and that mighty sword
of silver in the air, the silence, the large
solemnity, the queer line of black heads
barely visible above the sea of weeds! I
was not right certain that I had lost any
bear as we came to the edge of the moss-
swept cypress woods, for here the negroes
all suddenly huddled up and muttered and
prayed with one voice. Aye, how they
prayed in their piteous monotone! How
sad it all was!

The dogs had sat down a few rods back,
a line of black dots along the path through
the tall weeds, and did not seem to care
for anything at all. I had to lay my hand
on the preacher's shoulder and ask him
to please get on; then they all started on
together, and oh, the moon, through the
swaying cypress moss, the mighty river
above!

It was with great effort that I got them
to cross a foot-log that lay across a lagoon
only a little way in the moss-hung woods,
the brave dogs all the time only a short

126 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

distance behind us still. It was a hot night
and the mosquitoes were terrible in the
woods, but I doubt if they bite the blacks
as they did me. Surely not, else they would
not be even as nearly alive as they are.

Having got them across the lagoon, I
gave them each 25 cents more, and this
made them want to go home. The dogs had
all sat down in a queer row on the foot-log.
Such languor, such laziness, such idiotic
helplessness I never saw before, even on
the Nile. The blacks, as well as the dogs,
seemed to be afraid to move now. The
preacher again began to mumble a prayer,
and the whole pa.ck with him; and then
they prayed again, this time not so loudly.
And although there was melody of a sort
in their united voices, I am certain they
used no words, at least no words of any
real language.

Suddenly the dogs got up and came
across and hid among the men, and the
men huddled up close; for right there on
the other end of the log, with his broad

BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 127

right foot resting on it, was the shaggy
little beast we were hunting for. We had
found our bear, or rather, he had found us,
and it was clear that he meant to come
over and interview us at once.

The preacher crouched behind me as I
cocked a.nd raised my gun, the blacks hid
behind the preacher, and I think, though
I had not time to see certainly, that the
dogs hid behind the blacks.

I fired at the dim white spot on the bear's
breast and sent shot after shot into his
tattered coat, for he was not ten lengths
of an old Kentucky ramrod distant, and
he fell dead where he stood, and I went
over and dragged him safely up on the
higher bank.

Then the wild blacks danced and sang
and sang and danced, till one of them
slipped and fell into the lagoon. They
fished him out and all returned to where
I wag, with the dead bear, dogs and all in
great good spirits. Tying the bear's feet
together with a withe they strung him on

128 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

a pole and we all went back home, the
blacks singing all the way some barbaric
half French song at the top of their melod-
ious voices.

But Colonel Bloom was afraid that the
one who had fallen in the river might take
the fever, and so as soon as we got safe
back he drank what was left in the bottle
General Beauregard had sent him and he
went to sleep; while the superstitious
blacks huddled together under the great
levee and skinned the bear in the silver
moonlight, below the mighty river. I gave
them each a silver dollar — very bright was
the brand new silver from the mint of New
Orleans, but not nearly so bright as the
moon away down there by the glowing
rim of the Mexican seas where the spec-
tacled bear abides in the classic land,
Barra Tarra, Kingdom of Sancho Panza.

XIV.
THE BEAR-SLAYER OF SAN DIEGO

Let us now leave the great grizzly and
the little marsh bear in spectacles behind
us and tell about a boy, a bear-slayer; not
about a bear, mind you. For the little fish-
eating black bear which he killed and by
which he got his name is hardly worth tell-
ing about. This bear lives in the brush
along the sea-bank on the Mexican and
Southern California coast and has huge
feet but almost no hair. I don't know
any name for him, but think he resembles
the "sun bear" (Ursus Titanus) more than
any other. His habit of rolling himself up
in a ball and rolling down hill after you
is like that of the porcus or pig bear.

You may not know that a bear, any kind
of a bear, finds it hard work running down
hill, because of his short arms, so when a
man who knows anything about bears is

129

130 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

pursued, or thinks he is pursued, he always
tries, if he knows himself, to run down hill.
A man can escape almost any bear by run-
ning down hill, except this little fel/ow
along the foothills by the Mexican seas.
You see, he has good bear sense, like the
rest of the bear family, and gets along
without regard to legs of any sort, some
times.

This boy that I am going to tell about
was going to school on the Mexican side
of the line between the two republics, near
San Diego, California, when a she bear
which had lost her cub caught sight of the
boys at play down at the bottom of a high,
steep hill, and she rolled for them, rolled
right among the little, half-naked fellows,
and knocked numbers of them down. But
before she could get the dust out of her
eyes and get up, this boy jumped on her
and killed her with his knife.

The governor remembered the boy for his
pluck and presence of mind and he was

THE BEAK-SLAYEE. 131

quite a hero and was aiways called "The
Bear-Slayer" after that.

Some rich ladies from Boston, hearing
about his brave act, put their heads to-
gether and then put their hands in their
pockets and sent him to a higher school,
where the following incident took place.

I ought to mention that this little Mexi-
can bear, though he has but little hair
on his body, has a great deal on his feet,
making him look as if he wore pantalets,
little short pantalets badly frayed out at
the bottoms.

San Diego is one of the great new cities
of Southern California, It lies within only
a few minutes' ride of Mexico. There is a
pretty little Mexican town on the line be-
tween Mexico and California — Tia Juana
— pronounced Te Wanna, Translated, the
name means "Aunt Jane." In the center
of one of the streets stands a great gray
stone monument, set there by the govern-
ment to mark the line between the United
States and Mexico.

132 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

To the south, several hundred miles dis-
tant, stretches the long Sea of Cortez, as
the conquerors of ancient Mexico once
called the Gulf of California. Beyond the
Sea of Cortez is the long and rock-bound
reach of the west coast of Mexico. Then a
group of little Central American republics;
then Colombia, Peru and so on, till at last
Patagonia points away like a huge giant's
finger straight toward the South Pole.

But I must bear in mind that I set out
in this story to tell you about "The Bear
Slayer of Sa.n Diego," and the South Pole
i« a long way from the subject in hand.

I have spoken of San Diego as one of the
great new cities, and great it is, but al-
together new it certainly is not, for it was
founded by a Spanish missionary, known
as Father Junipero, more than one hun-
dred years ago.

These old Spanish missionaries were
great men in their day; brave, patient and
very self-sacrificing in their attempts to

THE BEAR-SLAYEE. 133

settle the wild countries and civilize the
Indians.

This Father Junipero walked all the way
from the City of Mexico to San Diego, al-
though he was more than fifty years old;
and finally, after he had spent nearly a
quarter of a century in founding missions
up and down the coast of California, he
walked all the way back to Mexico, where
he died.

When it is added that he was a lame
man, that he was more than threescore
and ten years of age, and that he traveled
all the distance on this last journey on
foot and alone, with neither arms nor pro-
visions, trusting himself entirely to Provi-
dence, one can hardly fail to remember his
name and speak it with respect.

This new city, San Diego, with its most
salubrious clime, is set all over and about
with waving green palms, with golden
oranges, red pomegranates, great heavy
bunches of green and golden bananas, and
silver-laden olive orchards. The leaf of the

134 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

olive is of the same soft gray as the breast
of the dove. As if the dove and the olive
branch had in some sort kept companion-
ship ever since the days of the deluge.

San Diego is nearly ten miles broad, with
its base resting against the warm, still wa-
ters of the Pacific Ocean. The most popu-
lous part of the city is to the south, toward
Mexico. Then comes the middle part of
San Diego City. This is called "the old
town," and here it was that Father Juni-
pero planted some palm trees that stand to
this day — so tall that they almost seem
to be dusting the stars with their splendid
plumes.

Here also you see a great many old adobe
houses in ruins, old forts, churches, fort-
resses, barracks, built by the Mexicans
nearly a century ago, when Spain pos-
sessed California, and her gaudy banner
floated from Oregon to the Isthmus of
Darien.

The first old mission is a little farther
on up the coast, and the new college,

THE BEAR-SLAYER. 135

known as the San Diego College of Letters,
is still farther on up the warm sea bank.
San Francisco lies several hundred miles
on up the coast beyond Los Angeles. Then
conies Oregon, then Washington, one of
the newest States, and then Canada, then
Alaska, and at last the North Pole, which,
by the way, is almost as far as the South
Pole from my subject : The Bear-Slayer of
San Diego.

He was a little Aztec Indian, brown as a
berry, slim and slender, very silent, very
polite and not at all strong.

It was said that he had Spanish blood
in his veins, but it did not show through
his tawny skin. It is to be conceded, how-
ever, that he had all the politeness and
serene dignity of the proudest Spanish don
in the land.

He was now, by the kind favor of those
good ladies wrho had heard of his daring
address in killing the bear with his knife,
a student of the San Diego College of Let-
ters, where there were several hundred

136 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

other boys of all grades and ages, from
almost all parts of the earth.

A good many boys came here from Bos-
ton and other eastern cities to escape the
rigors of winter. I remember one boy in
particular from Philadelphia. He was a
small boy with a big nose, very bright and
very brave. He was not a friend of the
little Aztec Indian, the Bear-Slayer of San
Diego. The name of this boy from Phila-
delphia was Peterson; the Boston boys
called him Bill Peterson. His name, per-
haps, was William P. Peterson; William
Penn Peterson, most likely. But this is
merely detail, and can make but little dif-
ference in the main facts of the case.

As I said before, these college grounds
are on the outer edge of the city. The
ocean shuts out the world on the west, but
the huge chaparral hills roll in on the east,
and out of these hills the jack-rabbits come
down in perfect avalanches at night, and
devour almost everything that grows.

Wolves howl from these hills of chapar-

THE BEAE-SLAYEE. 137

ral at night by hundreds, but they are only
little bits of shaggy, gray coyotes and do
little or no harm in comparison with the
innumerable rabbits. For these big fel-
lows, on their long, bent legs, and with
ears like those of a donkey, can cut down
with their teeth a young orchard almost in
a single night.

The new college, of course, had new
grounds, new bananas, oranges, olives, all
things, indeed, that wealth and good taste
could contribute in this warm, sweet soil.
But the rabbits! You could not build a
fence so high that they would not leap
over it.

"They are a sort of Jumbo grasshopper/'
said the smart boy from Boston.

The head gardener of the college campus
and environment grew desperate.

"Look here, sir," he said to the presi-
dent, "these big-eared fellows are lazy and
audacious things. Why can't they live up
in the chaparral, as they did before we
came here to plant trees and try to make

138 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

the world beautiful? Now, either these
jack-rabbits must go or we must go."

"Very well," answered the president.
"Offer a reward for their ears and let the
boys destroy them."

"How much reward can I offer?"

"Five cents apiece, I think, would do,"
answered the head of the college, as he
passed on up the great stone steps to his
study.

The gardener got the boys together that
evening and said, "I will give you five cents
apiece for the ears of these dreadful rab-
bits."

"That makes ten cents for each rabbit,
for each rabbit has two ears!" shouted the
smart boy from Boston.

Before the dumfounded gardener could
protest, the boys had broken into shouts
of enthusiasm, and were running away in
squads and in couples to borrow, buy or
beg firearms for their work.

The smart boy from Boston, however,
with an eye to big profits and a long job,

THE BEAR-SLAYER. 139

went straight to the express office, and
sent all the way to the East for a costly
and first-class shotgun.

The little brown Aztec Indian did noth-
ing of that sort; he kept by himself, kept
his own counsel, and so far as any of the
boys could find out, paid no attention to
the proffered reward for scalps.

Bill Peterson borrowed his older broth-
er's gun and brought in two rabbits the
next day. The Boston boy, with an eye
wide open to future profits to himself, went
with Peterson to the head gardener, and
holding up first one dead jack-rabbit by
the ear, and then the other, cool^ and de-
liberately counted off four ears.

The gardener grudgingly counted ont
two dimes, and then, with a grunt of sat-
isfaction, carried away the two big rabbits
by their long hind legs.

As the weeks wore by, several other dead
rabbits were reported, and despite the
grumbling of the head gartiener, the tu-
multuous and merry students had quite a
10

140 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

revenue, and their hopes for the future
were high, especially when that artillery
should arrive from Boston!

Meantime, the little brown Aztec boy
had done nothing at all. However, when
Friday afternoon came, he earnestly
begged, and finally obtained, leave to go
down to his home at Tia Juana. He
wanted very much to see his Mexican
mother and his six little Mexican brothers,
and his sixty, more or less, little Mexican,
cousins.

But lo! on Saturday morning, bright and
early, back came the little Bear-Slayer, as
he was called by the boys, and at his heels
came toddling and tumbling not only his
six half -naked little brown brothers, but
dozens of his cousins.

Each carried a bundle on his back. These
bundles were long, finely woven bird-nets,
and these nets were made of the fiber of
the misnamed century plant, the agave.

This queer looking line of barefooted,
bareheaded, diminutive beings, headed by

THE BEAE-SLAYER. 141

the silent little Aztec, hastily dispersed it-
self along the outer edge of the grounds
next to the chaparral abode of the jack-
rabbits, and then, while grave professors
leaned from their windows, and a hundred
curious white boys looked on, these little
brown fellows fastened all their long bird-
nets together, and stretched two wide
wings out and up the hill.

Very quiet but very quick they were, and
when all the nets had been unwound and
stretched out in a great letter V far up
the hill, it was seen that each brown boy
had a long, heavy manzanita wood club in
his hand.

Suddenly and silently as they had come
they all disappeared up and over the hills
beyond, and in the dense black chaparral.

Where had they gone and what did all
this silent mystery mean? One, two, three
hours! What had become of this strange
little army of silent brown boys?

Another hour passed. Not a boy, not a

sign, not a sound. W'hat did it all mean?
10

142 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

Suddenly, down came a rabbit, jumping
high in the air, his huge ears flapping for-
ward and back, as if they had wilted in
the hot sun.

Then another rabbit, then another! Then
ten, twenty, forty, fifty, five hundred, a
thousand, all jumping over each other and
upon each other, and against the nets, with
their long legs thrust through the meshes,
and wriggling and struggling till the nets
shook as in a gale.

Then came the long lines of half-naked
brown boys tumbling down after them out
of the brush, and striking right and left,
up and down, with their clubs.

In less than ten minutes from the time
they came out of the brush, the little fel-
lows had laid down their clubs and were
dragging the game together.

The grave professors shook their hats
and handkerchiefs, and shouted with de-
light from their windows overhead, and all
the white boys danced about, wild with ex-
citement.

THE BEAR-SLAYER. 143

That is, all but one or two. The boy
from Boston said savagely to the little
Aztec, as he stood directing the counting
of the ears, "You're a brigand! You're
the black brigand of San Diego City, and I
can whip you !"

The brigand said nothing, but kept on
with his work.

In a little time the president and head
gardener came forward, and roughly esti-
mated that about one thousand of the pests
had been destroyed. Then the kindly pres-
ident went to the bank and brought out
one hundred silver dollars, which he
handed to the little Bear-Slayer of San
Diego in a cotton handkerchief.

The poor, timid little fellow's lips quiv-
ered. He had never seen so much money
in all his life. He held his head down in
silence for a long time and seemed to be
thinking hard. His half-naked little broth-
ers and cousins grouped about and seemed
to be waiting for a share of the money.

The boy's schoolmates also crowded

144 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

around, just as boys will, but they did not
want any of the silver, and I am sure that
all, save only one or two, were very glad
because of his good luck.

Finally, lifting up his head and looking
about the crowd of his school-fellows, he
said, "Now, look here; I want every one of
you to take a dollar apiece, and I will take
what is left." He laid the handkerchief
that held the silver dollars down on the
grass and spread it wide open.

Hastily but orderly, his schoolmates be-
gan to take up the silver, his own little
brown fellows timidly holding back. Then
one of the white boys who had hastily
helped himself saw, after a time, that the
bottom was almost reached, and, with the
remark that he was half ashamed of him-
self for taking it, he quietly put his dollar
back. Then all the others, fine, impulsive
fellows who had hardly thought what they
were about at first, did the same; and then
the little brown boys came forward.

They kept coming and kept taking, till

THE BEAK-SLAYER. 145

there was not very much but his handker-
chief left. One of the professors then took
a piece of gold from his pocket and gave
it to the little Bear-Slayer. The boy was
so glad that tears came into his eyes and
he turned to go.

"See here! I'm sorry for what I said.
Yes, I am. I ought to be ashamed, and I
am ashamed."

It was the smart boy from Boston who
had been looking on all this time, and who
now came forward with his hand held out.

"See here!" he said. "I've got a forty-
dollar shotgun to give away, and I want
you to have it. Yes, I do. There's my
hand on it. Take my hand, and you shall
have the gun just as soon as it gets here."

The two shook hands, and the boys all
shouted with delight; and on the very next
Saturday one of these two boys went out
hunting quail with a fine shotgun on his
shoulder.

It was the silent little hero, The Bear-
Slayer of San Diego.

XV.

ALASKAN AND POLAK BEAR.

"And round about the bleak North Pole
Glideth the lean, white bear."

Nearly forty years ago, when down from
the Indian country to sell some skins in
San Francisco, I saw a great commotion
around a big ship in the bay, and was told
that a Polar bear had been discovered
floating on an iceberg in the Arctic, and
had been taken alive by the ship's crew.

I went out in a boat, and on boarding
the ship, just down from Alaska with a
cargo of ice, I saw the most beautiful speci-
men of the bear family I ever beheld. A
long body and neck, short legs, small head,
cream-white and clean as snow, this enor-
mous creature stood before us on the deck,
as docile as a lamb. This is as near as ever
I came to encountering the Polar bear, al-
though I have lived in the Arctic and have

140

ALASKAN BEAR. 147

more than one trophy of the bear family
from the land of everlasting snows.

Bear are very plenty in Alaska and the
Klondike country, and they are, perhaps,
a bit more ferocious than in California, for
I have seen more than one man hobbling
about the Klondike mines on one leg, hav-
ing lost the other in an argument with
bear.

As a rule, the flesh is not good, here, in
the salmon season, for the bear is in all
lands a famous fisherman. He sits by the
river and, while you may think he is asleep,
he thrusts his paw deep down, and, quick
as wink, he lands a huge salmon in his
bunch of long, hooded claws.

A friend and I watched a bear fishing
for hours on the Yukon, trying to learn his
habits. I left my friend, finally, and went
to camp to cook supper. Then, it seems,
my friend shot him, for his skin, I think.
Thinking the bear dead, he called to me
and went up to the bear, knife in hand.
But the bear rose up when he felt the knife,

148 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

caught the man in his arms and they rolled
in the river together. The poor man could
not get away. When we recovered his body
far down the river next day, the bear still
held him in her arms. She was a long,
slim cinnamon, said to be the most savage
fighter in that region.

All the bear of the far north seem to me
to have longer bodies and shorter legs than
in other lands. The black bear (there are
three kinds of them) are bow-legged, I
think; at least they "toe in," walk as an
Indian walks, and even step one foot over
the other when taking their time on the
trail. We cultivated the acquaintance of
a black bear for some months, on the Klon-
dike, in the winter of '97-'98, and had a
good chance to learn his habits. He was a
persistent robber and very cunning. He
would eat anything he could get, which
was not much, of course, and when he
could not get anything thrown to him from
a door he would go and tear down a stump
and eat ants. I don't know why he

ALASKAN BEAR. 149

did not hibernate, as other bears in that
region do. He may have been a sort of
crank. No one who knew about him, or
who had been in camp long, would hurt
him; but a crowd of strangers, passing up
the trail near our Klondike cabin, saw him,
and as he did not try to get away he was
soon dead. He weighed 400 pounds, and
they sold him where he lay for one dollar
a pound.

I fell in wTith a famous bear-hunter, a
few miles up from the mouth of the Klon-
dike early in September, before the snow
fell, and with him made a short hunt. He
has wonderful bear sense. He has but one
eye and but one side of a face, the rest of
him having been knocked off by the slash
of a bear's paw. He is known as Bear Bill.

The moss is very deep and thick and
elastic in that region, so that no tracks are
made except in a worn trail. But Bill saw
where a bit of moss had been disturbed
away up on a mountain side, and he sat
right down and turned his one eye and all

150 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

his bear sense to the solution of the mys-
tery.

At last he decided tnat a bear had been
gathering moss for a bed. Then he went
close up under a cliff of rocks and in a few
minutes was peering and pointing down
into a sunken place in the earth. And
behold, we could see the moss move! A
bear had covered himself up and was wait-
ing to be snowed under. Bill walked all
around the spot, then took position on a
higher place and shouted to the bear to
come out. The bear did not move. Then
he got me to throw some rocks. No re-
sponse. Then Bill fired his Winchester
down into the moss. In a second the big
brown fellow was on his hind feet looking
us full in the face and blinking his little
black eyes as if trying to make us out.
Bill dropped him at once, with a bullet in
his brain.

I greatly regret that I never had the
good fortune to encounter a Polar bear, so
that I might be able to tell you more about

ALASKAN BEAE. 151

him and his habits; for men of science and
writers of books are not bear-hunters, as
a rule, and so real information about this
white robber-monk of the cold, blue north
is meager indeed. But here is what the
most eminent English authority says about
the nature and habits of this one bear that
I have not shaken hands with, or encoun-
tered in some sort of way on his native
heath:

"The great white bear of the Arctic re-
gions— the 'Nennok' of the Eskimo — is the
largest as well as one of the best known
of the whole family. It is a gigantic ani-
mal, often attaining a length of nearly nine
feet and is proportionally strong and fierce.
It is found over the whole of Greenland;
but its numbers seem to be on the decrease.
It is distinguished from other bears by its
narrow head, its flat forehead in a line with
its prolonged muzzle, its short ears and
long neck. It is of a light, creamy color,
rarely pure white, except when young,
hence the Scottish whalers call it the

152 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

'brounie' and sometimes the 'farmer,' from
its very agricultural appearance as it stalks
leisurely over the furrowed fields of ice. Its
principal food consists of seals, which it
persecutes 'most indefatigably; but it is
somewhat omniverous in its diet, and will
often clear an islet of eider duck eggs in
the course of a few hours. I once saw it
watch a seal for half a day, the seal con-
tinually escaping, just as the bear was
about putting his foot on it, at the atluk
(or escape hole) in the ice. Finally, it tried
to circumvent its prey in another maneu-
ver. It swam off to a distance, and when
the seal was again half asleep at its atluk,
the bear swam under the ice, with a view
to cut off its retreat. It failed, however,
and the seal finally escaped. The ra.ge of
the animal was boundless; it moaned hide-
ously, tossing the snow in the air, and at
last trotted off in a most indignant state
of mind.

"Being so fond of seal-flesh, the Polar
bear often proves a great nuisance to seal-

ALASKAN BEAR. 153

hunters, whose occupation he naturally re-
gards as a catering to his wants. He is also
glad of the whale carcasses often found
floating in the Arctic seas, and travelers
have seen as many as twenty bears busily
discussing the huge body of a dead whale-
bone whale.

"As the Polar bear is able to obtain food
all through the Arctic winter, there is not
the same necessity, as in the case of the
vegetable-eating bears, for hibernating. In
fact, the males and young females roam
about through the whole winter, and only
the older females retire for the season.
These — according to the Eskimo account,
quoted by Captain Lyon — are very fat at
the commencement of winter, and on the
first fall of snow lie down and allow them-
selves to be covered, or else dig a cave in
a drift, and then go to sleep until the
spring, wrhen the cubs are born. By this
time the animal's heat has melted the snow
for a considerable distance, so that there is
plenty of room for the young ones, who

154 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

tumble about at their ease and get fat at
the expense of their parent, who, after her
long abstinence, becomes gradually very
thin and weak. The whole family leave
their abode of snow when the sun is strong
enough to partially melt its roof.

"The Polar bear is regularly hunted with
dogs by the Eskimo. The following ex-
tract gives an account of their mode of pro-
cedure:

"Let us suppose a bear scented out at
the base of an iceberg. The Eskimo ex-
amines the track with sagacious care, to
determine its age and direction, and the
speed with which the animal was moving
when he passed along. The dogs are set
upon the trail, and the hunter courses over
the ice in silence. As he turns the angle
of the berg his game is in view before him,
stalking along, probably, with quiet march,
sometimes snuffing the air suspiciously,
but making, nevertheless, for a nest of
broken hummocks. The dogs spring for-
ward, opening a wild, wolfish yell, the

Pressed more severely, the bear stands at bay. — Page 155.

ALASKAN BEAR. 155

driver shrieking 'Nannook! Nannook !' and
all straining every nerve in pursuit.

"The bear rises on his haunches, then
starts off at full speed. The hunter, as he
runs, leaning over his sledge, seizes the
traces of a couple of his dogs and liberates
them from their burthen. It is the work
of a minute, for the motion is not checked,
and the remaining dogs rush on with ap-
parent ease.

"Now, pressed more severely, the bear
makes for an iceberg, and stands at bay,
while his two foremost pursuers halt at a
short distance and await the arrival of the
hunter. At this moment the whole pack
are liberated ; the hunter grasps his lance,
and, tumbling through the snow and ice,
prepares for the encounter.

"If there be two hunters, the bear is
killed easily; for one makes a feint of
thrusting the spear at the right side, and,
as the animal turns with his arms toward
the threatened attack, the left is unpro-
tected and receives the death wound."
11

XVI.

MONNEHAN, THE GREAT BEAR-
HUNTER OF OREGON.

He wore a tall silk hat, the first one I
had ever seen, not at all the equipment of
"a mighty hunter before the Lord;" but
Phineas Monnehan, Esq., late of some cas-
tle (I forget the name now), County of
Cork, Ireland, would have been quite an-
other personage with another sort of hat.
And mighty pretension made he to great
estates and titles at home, but greatest of
all his claims was that of "a mighty
hunter."

Clearly he had been simply a schoolmas-
ter at home, and had picked up all his
knowledge of wild beasts from books. He
had very impressive manners and had come
to Oregon with an eye to political promo-
tion, for he more than once hinted to my
quiet Quaker father, on whose hospitality

156

MONNEHAN. 157

he had fastened himself, that he would not
at all dislike going to Congress, and would
even consent to act as Governor of this far-
off and half-savage land known as Oregon.
But, as observed a time or two before,
Monnehan most of all things desired the
name and the renown, like Nimrod, the
builder of Babylon, of a "mighty hunter."
He had brought no firearms with him,
nor wras my father at all fond of guns, but
finally we three little boys, my brother
John, two years older than I, my brother
James, two years younger, and myself, had
a gun between us. So with this gun, Mon-
uehan, under his tall hat, a pipe in his
teeth and a tremendously heavy stick in
his left hand would wander about under
the oaks, not too far away from the house,
all the working hours of the day. Not that
he ever killed anything. In truth, I do not
now recall that he ever once fired off the
gun. But he got away from work, all the
same, and a mighty hunter was Monnehan.

He carried this club and kept it
11

158 TKUE BEAK STORIES.

swinging and sweeping in a semi-circle
along before him all the time be-
cause of the incredible number of rattle-
snakes that infested our portion of Ore-
gon in those early days. I shall never
forget the terror in this brave stranger's
face when he first found out that all the
grass on all our grounds was literally alive
with snakes. But he had found a good
place to stay, and he was not going to be
driven out by snakes.

You see, we lived next to a mountain or
steep stony hill known as Rattlesnake
Butte, and in the ledges of limestone rock
here the rattlesnakes hibernated by thou-
sands. In the spring they would crawl out
of the cracks in the cliffs, and that was the
beginning of the end of rattlesnakes in
Oregon. It was awful!

But he had a neighbor by the name of
Wilkins, an old man now, and a recent
candidate for Governor of Oregon, who was
equal to the occasion. He sent back to the
States and had some black, bristly, razor-

MONNEHAN. 159

backed hogs brought out to Oregon. These
hogs ate the rattlesnakes. But we must
get on with the bear story; for this man
Monnehan, who came to us the year
the black, razor-backed hogs came, was,
as I may have said before, "a mighty
hunter."

The great high hills back of our house,
black and wild and woody, were full of
bear. There were several kinds of bear
there in those days.

"How big is this ere brown bear,
Squire?" asked Monnehan.

"Well," answered my father, "almost as
big as a small sawmill when in active
operation."

"Oi think Oi'll confine me operations, for
this hunting sayson, to the smaller spacies
o' bear," said Mr. Monnehan, as he arose
with a thoughtful face and laid his pipe
on the mantel-piece.

A few mornings later you would have
thought, on looking at our porch, that a
very large negro from a very muddy place

160 TRUE BEAE STORIES.

had been walking bare-footed up and down
the length of it. This was not a big bear
by the sign, only a small black cub; but
we got the gun out, cleaned and loaded it,
and by high noon we three little boys, my
father and Monnehan, the mighty hunter,
were on the track of that little black bear.
We had gone back up the narrow canyon
with its one little clump of dense woods
that lay back of our house and reached up
toward the big black hills.

Monnehan took the gun and his big club
and went along up and around above the
edge of the brush. My father took the
pitchfork and my younger brother James
kept on the ridge above the brush on the
other side of the canyon, while my older
brother John and myself were directed
to come on a little later, after Mr. Monne-
han had got himself in position to do his
deadly work, and, if possible, drive the ter-
rible beast within range of his fatal rifle.

Slowly and cautiously my brother and I
came on, beating the brush and the tall

MONNEHAN. 161

rye grass. As we advanced up the canyon,
Mr. Monnehan was dimly visible on the
high ridge to the right, and father now
and then was to be seen with little brother
and his pitchfork to the left. Suddenly
there was such a shout as almost shook
the walls of the canyon about our ears. It
was the voice of Monnehan calling from
the high ridge close above the clump of
dense wood; and it was a. wild and a des-
perate and a continuous howl, too. At last
we could make out these words:

"Oi've thrade the bear! Oi've thrade the
bear! Oi've thrade the bear!"

Down the steep walls came father like
an avalanche, trailing his pitchfork in one
hand and half dragging little brother
James with the other.

"Run, boys, run! right up the hill ! He's
got him treed, he's got him treed! Keep
around the bush and go right up the hill,
fast as you can. He's got him treed, he's
got him treed! Hurrah for Monnehan, at

162 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

last! He's got him treed, he's got him
treed!"

Out of breath from running, my father
sat down at the foot of the steep wall of
the canyon below Monnehan and we boys
clambered on up the grassy slope like
goats.

Meantime, Monnehan kept shouting
wildly and fearfully as before. Such lungs
as Monnehan had! A mighty hunter was
Monnehan. At last we got on the ridge up
among the scattering and storm-bent and
low-boughed oaks; breathless and nearly
dead from exhaustion.

"Here, byes, here!"

We looked up the hill a little ahead of
us from where the voice came, and there,
straddled across the leaning bough of a
broad oak tree hung Monnehan, the mighty
hunter. His hat was on the ground under-
neath him, his club was still in his daring
hand, but his gun was in the grass a hun-
dred yards away.

"Here, boys, right up here. Come up

MONNEHAN. 163

here an' get a look at 'im! Thot's vaght
Oi got up 'ere fur, to get a good look at
'im! Right up now, byes, an' get a good
look at 'im! Look out fur me hat there!"

My brother hastily ran and got and
handed me the gun and instantly was up
the tree along with Monnehan, peering for-
ward and back, left and right, everywhere.
But no sign, no sound or scent of any bear
anywhere.

By this time my father had arrived with
his pitchfork and a very tired little boy.
Me sat down on the grass, and, wearily
wiping his forehead, he said to Monnehan,

"Mr. Monnehan, how big was the bear
that you saw?"

"Well, now, Squire, upon the sowl o' me,
he was fully the size of a very extraordi-
nary black dog," answered Mr. Monnehan,
as he descended and came and stood close
to my father, as if to defend him with his
club. Father rose soon after and, with
just the least tinge of impatience and vex-

164 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

ation in his voice, said to brother John
and me,

"Boys, go up and around the thicket
with your gun and beat the bush down the
canyon as you come down. Mr. Monnehan
and I will drop down to the bottom of the
canyon here between the woods and the
house and catch him as he comes out."

Brother and I were greatly cheered at
this; for it was evident that father had
faith that we would find the bear yet. And
believing that the fun was not over, we,
tired as we were, bounded forward and
on and up and around the head of the
canyon with swift feet and beating hearts.
Here we separated, and each taking a half
of the dense copse of wood and keeping
within hailing distance, we hastily de-
scended through the steep tangle of grape-
vine, wild hops, wild gourdvines and all
sorts of things, shouting and yelling as we
went. But no bear or sign of bear as yet.

We were near the edge of the brush.
I could see, from a little naked hillock in

MONNEHAN. 165

the copse where I paused to take breath,
my father with his pitchfork standing clost
to the cow path below the brush, while a
little further away and a little closer to the
house stood Mr. Monnehan, club in hand
and ready for the raging bear.

Suddenly I heard the brush break and
crackle over in the direction of my brother.
I dropped on my knee and cocked my gun.
I got a glimpse of something black tearing
through the brush like a streak, but did not
fire.

Then I heard my brother shout, and I
thought I heard him laugh, too. Just then
there burst out of the thicket and on past
my father and his pitchfork a little black,
razor-backed sow, followed by five black,
squealing pigs! Monnehan's bear!

XVII.
THE BEAR "MONARCH."

HOW HE WAS CAPTURED.

Much having been said about bears of
late, a young Californian of great fortune
and enterprise resolved to set some ques-
tions at rest, and, quite regardless of cost
or consequences, sent into the mountains
for a live grizzly. The details of his cap-
ture, the plain story of the long, wild quest,
the courage, the cunning, the final submis-
sion of the monster, and then the last bul-
letin about his health, habits and all that,
make so instructive and pleasing a narra-
tive that I have asked for permission to
add it to my own stories. The bear de-
scribed is at present in our San Francisco
Zoo, a fine and greatly admired monarch.

"Are there any true grizzly bears in Cali-
fornia?"

166

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 167

* Undoubtedly there are."

"I don't know about it. I have a great
deal of doubt. Where are they?"

"In the Sierra Madre, in Touloumne
Canyon, in Siskiyou County and probably in
many other mountain districts."

"That may be so, but nobody can find
them. Now, do you think you could find
them?"

"I think I could if I should try."

"Would you undertake to get a genuine
grizzly in this State?"

"Yes, if you want one. How will you
have him — dead or alive?"

"Alive."

This conversation was held last May be-
tween the proprietor of the Examiner and
special reporter Allen Kelly.

A week ago Kelly brought home an enor-
mous grizzly bear, lodged the animal tem-
porarily in one of the cages in Woodward's
Gardens and reported to the editor that he
had finished that assignment.

1G8 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

The following is his account of the hunt
and capture.

The Examiner expedition began the
search for a grizzly early in June,
starting from Santa Paula and striking
into the mountains at Tar Creek, where
the Sespe oil wells are bored. The Exam-
iner correspondent detailed to catch a bear
was accompanied by De Moss Bowers of
Ventura, who was moved by love of ad-
venture to offer his assistance.

During the first part of the trip the party
numbered five persons, including Dad Coff-
man, a spry old gentleman of seventy-two
years, who was out for the benefit of his
health, a packer and guide, and a person
from Santa Paula, called "Doc," who was
loaded to the muzzle with misinformation
and inspired with the notion that it was
legitimate to plunder the expedition be-
cause the Examiner had plenty of money.
The packer was "Doc's" son, a good man
to work, but unfortunately afflicted with
similar hallucinations. The expedition was

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 169

plundered because these persons were
trusted on the recommendation of a gen-
tleman who ought to have known better.

At Tar Creek the correspondent was told
that the Stone Corral bear, a somewhat
noted grizzly that had killed his man, had
been recently on Squaw Flat, and had
prowled about an old cabin at night, sort-
ing over the garbage heap and pile of tin
cans at the door, but when the expedition
passed the cabin no fresh sign was found,
and the tracks on Squaw Flat were at least
a week old.

The first camp was in a clump of chinca-
pin brush at Stone Corral. There were
bear tracks in the soft ground at the edge
of the creek, which induced the hunters
to spend two days in prospecting that part
of the country. One of the proposed plans
for capturing the bear wras to run him out
of the rocks and brush to some reasonably
open bit of country like Squaw Flat or one
of the small level patches near camp and

170 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

lasso him, but the impracticable nature of
that scheme was soon demonstrated. On
the next day after making camp the Exam-
iner's own bear catcher went out on a nerv-
ous black horse called "Nig" to find out
where the Stone Corral bear was spending
the summer and incidentally to get some
venison. The Stone Corral bear was there
or thereabouts beyond any doubt. He ran
the correspondent out of the brush and
showed a perverse disposition to do all the
hunting himself. "Nig" wrould not stand
to let his rider take a (shot, but when the
bear gave notice of his presence by growl-
ing and smashing down the brush twenty
yards away, he wheeled and bolted
towards camp. Near the camp Dad was
found rounding up the other horses, who
had just been scared from their pasturage
by another wandering bear. It was clear
that not a horse in the outfit could be rid-
den to within roping distance of a bear,
and it is doubtful if three horses fit for
such a job could be found in the country.

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 171

Some years ago the ranchmen and va-
queros frequently caught bears with a
rope, but even then it was difficult to train
horses to the work, and only one horse out
of a hundred could be cured of his instinc-
tive dread of a grizzly.

It was clear also that there were some
defects in the plan of driving the Stone
Corral bear out of the brush, chief of which
was the bear's inconsiderate desire to do
the driving himself. As the hunting would
have to be done afoot, the prospects inci-
dent to an attempt to round up a big griz-
zly among the rocks and chaparral were
not peculiarly alluring. Trapping was the
only other method that could be suggested,
but the absence of any heavy timber would
make that difficult.

The Stone Corral is a singular arrange-
ment of huge sandstone ledges on the slope
of a mountain, forming a rough inclosure
about a quarter of a mile wide and three
or four times as long. The country is very

rugged and broken for miles around, and
12

172 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

except along the creek and on the trail a
horse cannot be ridden through it. The
problem of how to catch a bear in such a
place was not solved, because the bear cut
short its, consideration by marching past
the camp and lumbering down the creek
bed toward the Alder Creek Canyon and the
Sespe country. The correspondent stood
upon the sandstone ledge as he went by,
and yelled at him, but he did not quicken
his pace.

When it became evident that the bear
was bound for the Sespe, the horses were
saddled. Balaam the Burro was concealed
under a. mountainous pack, and the march
was resumed over the Alder Creek trail to
the deep gorge through which the Sespe
River runs. The man who made the Alder
Creek trail was not born to build roads.
He laid it out right over the top of a high
and steep mountain, when by making a
slight detour, he could have avoided a diffi-
cult and unnecessary climb. In the broil-
ing hot sun of a breezeless day in June,

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 173

the march over the mountains was hard on
men and horses, and the pace was neces-
sarily slow.

The heat coaxed the rattlesnakes out of
their holes, and the angry hum of their
rattles was an almost incessant accompan-
iment to the hoof beats of the horses.
Where the trail wound along a steep slope,
affording but slight foothold for an animal,
a more than unusually strenuous and in-
sistent singing of a snake, disturbed from
his sunny siesta, caused Balaam to jump
aside. Balaam avoided the snake, but he
lost his balance and rolled down the slope,
heels in the air and pack underneath. The
acrobatic feats achieved by Balaam in his
struggles to regain his footing were
watched by an admiring and solicitous au-
dience, and when he cleverly took advant-
age of the slight obstruction offered by a
manzanita bush, and got safely upon his
feet, he was loudly applauded. The deep
solicitude of the party for the safety of
Balaam and his pack was accounted for

Mi

174 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

when he scrambled back to the trail and
gravely walked up to the packer to have
his pack straightened. Every man anx-
iously felt of the pack, and heaved a sigh of
relief. The bottles containing O. P. S., an-
tidote for snake bite, were not broken, but
it was a narrow escape.

"Great Beeswax!" said the Doctor, "sup-
pose those bottles had been smashed and
then some one of us should go to work and
bite himself with a snake! Wouldn't that
be a fix?"

"Dogdurn if it don't make my blood run
cold to think of it," said Dad.

Everybody's blood seemed to be con-
gealing, and as the pack was loose and
the antidote accessible, an ounce of pre-
vention was administered to each man, and
Balaam was rewarded for his timely agil-
ity with a handful of sugar.

No more accidents occurred, and late in
the afternoon the cavalcade slid, coasted
ar»d scrambled down the last steep hill into
the Sespe Canyon, where a camp was made

THE BEAR "MONAKCH." 175

under an immense oak beside a deep, rocky
pool. That evening, around the camp-fire,
some strange bear stories were evolved
from either the memories or imagination of
the hunters.

In the morning the search for bear signs
was resumed and prosecuted until noon
without success. Dad was lured by the
swarms of trout in the stream, and went
fishing. Dad is not a scientific fly fisher-
man. His favorite method is to select a
shady nook on the bank, sit down with his
back against a rock, tie a sinker to a large
and gaudy fly, and angle on the bottom
for the biggest trout he can see. He gen-
erally carries a book in his pocket, and
when the trout remains unresponsive to
the allurements of the gaudy fly, he fastens
his rod to a bush and reads until he falls
asleep.

In the afternoon one of the party went
out over a long, brushy ridge, and the cor-
respondent pushed on down the gorge in
search of bear signs. All the bear tracks

176 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

led up toward the Hot Springs Canyon, indi-
cating that the grizzlies had begun their
annual migration to the Alarno, Frazier
and Pine mountains, where large bands of
sheep are herded through the summer.
Some of the tracks were large and fresh,
and a person might come upon a bear at
any time in the bottom of the canyon. Pre-
parations were made for following the
bears and directions given for an early
start in the morning. The Doctor recol-
lected that he had important business in
Santa Paula that required his immediate
attention, and he wouldn't have time to
follow the grizzlies through the rugged
passes of the mountains. Accordingly, he
and Dad decided to remain in the Sespe
camp a day or two, enjoy the fishing, and
then return to Santa Paula, and the bear
hunting party that saddled up and struck
out on the trail of the grizzly in the morn-
ing was reduced to three.

The trail led through the Hot Springs
Canyon, where boiling hot sulphur water

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 177

flows out of the ground in a stream large
enough to sensibly affect the temperature
of the Sespe River, into which it runs. This
canyon was formerly a beautiful camping
spot, and was resorted to by many persons
who believed that bathing in sulphur wa-
ter would restore their health, but about
three years ago a cloudburst uprooted all
the trees and converted the green cien-
aga into a rocky desolate flat, as barren
and unattractive as the sharp, treeless
peaks surrounding the canyon. A few moun-
tain sheep inhabit the mountains about
the Hot Springs, and occasionally one is
seen standing upon some high and inacces-
sible cliff, but it is very seldom that a
hunter succeeds in getting a pair of big
horns.

The next camp was on the Piru Creek,
where it runs through the Mutaw ranch.
One of the most promising mining districts
in this part of the State takes its name
from the Piru, and in years gone by a great
deal of gold was taken from the diggings

178 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

along the stream. One of the most success-
ful miners was Mike Brannan, whose cab-
ins and mining appliances lie unused and
decaying about six miles from the place
where the expedition camped.

From the camp on the Mutaw the expe-
dition followed Piru Creek down to Lock-
wood, and the latter up to the divide be-
tween Lockwood Valley and the Cuddy
ranch at the foot of Mount Pinos, called
Sawmill Mountain by the settlers. The
mountain is about 10,000 feet high, and is
covered with heavy pine timber. Ever
since Haggin & Carr's sheep have been on
the mountain, the bears from forty miles
around have made annual marauding ex-
peditions, and kept the herders on the
jump all the summer. The first band of
sheep and the Examiner expedition arrived
at the old Sawmill simultaneously this
year, and the Basque who was herding the
band, having a very lively sense of the dan-
ger of his situation, pitched his tent close
to the camp, where he would be under the

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 179

protection of three rifles. The Basque had
never been on the mountain before, but
he had heard about the bears and their
audacious raids, and he was not at all
enamored of his job. When the campfires
were started, and the forest became an en-
closing wall of gloom, behind which lurked
all the mysteries and menaces of the moun-
tains, the Basque came shyly into camp,
bringing a shoulder of mutton with which
to establish friendly relations, and under
the mellowing influence of a glass of some-
thing hot he became confidential and
as communicative as his broken jargon of
French and California Spanish would per-
mit.

He had come to the mountain reluct-
antly, and having been told about the
herder whose hand was torn off by a grizzly
last year, he was still more unwilling to
remain. He would stay as long as the Ex-
aminer party remained near him, but when
the hunters went away he proposed to quit
and hasten back to the plains, where he

180 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

would have nothing worse than the coyotes
to encounter. Every night after that, so
long as the hunters were in that camp, the
Basque came and sat at the fire until bed-
time, talking about los osos, and when the
grass and water gave out and the expedi-
tion was obliged to move camp about two
miles, the gentle shepherd packed his blan-
kets over the trail to Bakersfield, leaving
his flock in the care of a leathery skinned
bear-hardened Mexican.

The bears were later this year than usual
in coming to the mountain, probably be-
cause the warm weather was longer de-
layed, and for many days the hunters
scanned the trails in the canyons in vain
for the footprints of grizzlies. The first
indication of their arrival was given in a
somewhat startling way to the correspon-
dent one evening as he was slowly toiling
through a deep, rocky ravine back to camp,
after a weary tramp over the foothills of
the big mountain.

The sun had set and the bottom of the

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 181

ravine was dark as night. The belated
searcher for bear signs skirted a dense wil-
low thicket, and brushed against the
bushes with his elbow. "Woof! Woof!"
snorted a bear within ten feet of him, in-
visible in the thicket. His heart thumped
and his rifle lock clicked, together, and
which sound was the louder he could not
tell. For a few seconds he stood at the
edge of the thicket with his rifle ready, ex-
pecting the rush of the bear, but the ani-
mal was not in a warlike mood and did
not rush, and the hunter cautiously backed
away about twenty yards up the steep side
of the ravine. The cracking of brush indi-
cated that bruin was moving in the thicket,
but nothing could be seen in the gather-
ing gloom. Two or three large rocks rolled
down into the willows started the bear out
on a run and he could be heard crashing
his way down the ravine and splashing into
the pools as he went. The remainder of
the journey back to camp was made

182 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

through the open pine forest on the top
of the mountain.

Superintendent McCullough, who has
charge of Haggin & Carr's sheep camps on
Pinos Mountain, stopped at the Examiner
camp when he made his inspecting tours,
and consultations were held with him
about the bears. From the reports given
him by the herders he judged that only
the bears that lived on the mountain were
prowling about, and that the invading
army had not arrived from the Alamo and
the Sespe region. A large cinnamon bear
had walked into one camp about ten miles
distant and killed two sheep in daylight,
but the grizzlies had not begun to eat mut-
ton. In July or August there would be
bears enough to keep a man busy shinning
up trees. Last year, he said, there were
at least forty bears on the mountain, and
they visited some of the sheep camps every
night. Sometimes two or three bears would
raid a camp, tree the herder and kill sev-
eral sheep. The herders were not expected

THE BEAR "MONAECH." 183

to fight bears or attempt to drive them
away, and the owners reckoned upon the
loss of several hundred sheep every sum-
mer.

Shortly before the first of July the camp
was moved to Seymore Spring, about two
miles from the mill, where good water and
feed were plenty, and search for bear sign
was continued. Every day some deep gorge
or rocky ravine was visited and thoroughly
hunted, and a deer was killed occasionally,
but no sign of bears was found until the
3d of July, when the tracks of a very large
grizzly were discovered crossing a ridge
between the Lockwood Valley and the Sey-
mour. The tracks were followed across the
Seymour Valley to a spur of the mountain
between the mill ravine and a deep canyon
to the westward.

Camp was moved to a green cienaga at
the head of the latter, which was chris-
tened Bear Canyon, and the building of a
trap was begun near the mouth — about
half a mile from camp. Three large pine

184 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

trees served as corner posts for a pen built
of twenty-inch logs, "gained" at the cor-
ners and fastened together with stout oak
pins. The pen was about twelve feet long,
four feet high and five feet wide inside,
and the door was made of pine logs sunk
into the ground and wedged and pinned se-
curely. A door of four-inch planks, so
heavy that it required three men to raise it,
was set in front, between oak guides pinned
vertically to the trees and suspended by
a rope running over a pulley and back to
a trigger that engaged with a pivoted stick
of oak, to which the bait was to be fast-
ened. Five days were consumed in the con-
struction of the trap, and while the work
was going on a bear visited the camp at
night and stampeded all the saddle and
pack animals out of the canyon.

A German prospector named Sparkuhle,
who was staying temporarily in the camp,
was cured of a severe case of skepticism
that night. Sparkuhle believed nothing
that he could not see, and he declared, with

THE BEAR "MONABCH." 185

exasperating iteration, "I believe there
don't vas any bears in der gountry. I look
for 'em every day, thinking perhaps might
I could see one, but I don't could see any."
And every night before he turned in,
Sparkuhle said: "Veil, might did a bear
come tonight. I wish I could see one, but
I think there don't vas any bears at all."

Sparkuhle scorned the shelter of the
bough shed, under which the Examiner
outfit slept, and spread his blankets on top
of a bank about six feet above a rocky shelf
that was used as a pantry and kitchen.
His only weapon was his pick, and he was
not afraid of being disturbed by any prowl-
ing animal.

It was about midnight when the camp
was alarmed by the snorting of the horses
and the clatter of hoofs galloping down
the canyon, but before the cause of the dis-
turbance could be learned a yell of sur-
prise came from Sparkuhle, followed by a
crash and a terrible clatter among the pots
and pans below the bank. In another mo-

186 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

ment Sparkuhle ran into the camp and be-
gan to tell excitedly what had happened
to him. He was so intensely interested
in his story that he paid no attention to a
three-tined fork that was sticking in him
just below the end of his back. He said
he was awakened by the noise in camp,
and looking up thought he saw the burro
standing over him. Seizing his pillow he
made a swipe at the animal, and said, "Get
away, Balaam!" and then the supposed
burro hit him a clip and knocked him spin-
ning over the edge of the bank, but the
blow did no further damage because
Sparkuhle was rolled up in half a dozen
blankets. The noise of his arrival among
the tinware alarmed the bear and when
the party got out with lights and guns he
was out of sight. Sparkuhle slept in the
cabin after that.

Two days later the big bear went into
a sheep camp near the mill, while the
herder was cooking supper, stampeded the
sheep right over the fire, caught one and

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 187

killed it, and sat down within thirty yards
of the herder and leisnrely gorged himself
with mutton. The Mexican herder de-
scribed him as "grande" and "muy bianco"
and said he was as tall as a mule. On the
following day at noon the same bear went
into another sheep camp about three miles
from the mill, and stole a freshly killed
sheep, which the herder had hung up for
his own use. Then he suddenly ceased his
raids and disappeared and for the next
three weeks the mountain seemed to be
deserted by the bears.

The herders had put strychnine into the
carcasses of several sheep that had died
of eating poisonous weeds, and McCul-
lough thought the bears must have eatea
the poisoned mutton and become sick. It
requires a strong dose of strychnine to kill
a grizzly, and frequently the bears get only
enough to make them ill and send them
into temporary retirement in some dark
gorge.

But while the bears were away tke

13

188 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

mountain lions and panthers managed to
keep things from becoming dull. They
came into camp several times and made
the canyon ring with their yowling, but they
always kept brush between themselves and
the fire-light, and it was impossible to get
a shot at them. Their raids became so an-
noying that two hounds were procured and
brought into camp; after that the night-
prowling beasts kept at a respectful dis-
tance. Being unable to steal any more
provisions from the Examiner outfit, the
lions turned their attention to the sheep
camps. One night a lion sneaked up
through a willow thicket to the nearest
sheep camp and killed three sheep. He was
a dainty lion, evidently, as he only cut the
throats of the sheep and drank their blood
and did not eat any mutton. The same lion
followed the scent of a carcass that had
been dragged to the bear trap for bait, but
he stopped twenty yards from the trap, and
went away, not caring to risk his neck
by going into any such contrivance.

THE BEAR "MONAKCH." 189

Wherever bait was dragged over the
mountain, and it was dragged many miles
for the purpose of enticing bear to the trap,
the lions followed the trail, but they would
not go into the trap. Still it is not safe
to generalize from this fact and assume
that the cougar or mountain lion never will
go into a trap, for he is a most erratic and
uncertain beast. Sometimes he is an ar-
rant coward, and again he is as bold as a
genuine lion. Generally a dog will keep
cougars away from a camp or house, but
once in a while the cougar hunts the dog
and kills him.

One afternoon a cougar jumped into Joe
Dye's dooryard at his ranch on the Sespe,
picked up Joe's baby and sprang over the
fence with it. Joe seized his rifle and shot
the animal as it ran, and when the cougar
felt the sting of the bullet he dropped the
baby and ran up the mountain. He had
seized the baby's clothes only, and the lit-
tle one was not hurt. The next night the
cougar returned, captured Joe's hound,

13

190 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

carried it into the mountains and killed it.

On the 1st of August, the report reached
camp that the bears were having a picnic
on the Mutaw ranch and were killing hogs
by the sccre. John F. Cuddy's sons, the
best vaqueros and bronco-riders in this
part of the country, offered to go over to
the Mutaw with the correspondent and
lasso a bear if one could be found on open
ground; accordingly, the party saddled up
and took the trail up the Piru, arriving
at the Mutaw meadows late in the night,
after a rough ride of twenty miles.

In the morning Mr. Taylor, one of the
owners of the ranch, was found skinning
a grizzly that had eaten strychnine in pork
during the night. Mr. Taylor had put poi-
son out all over the ranch and the prospect
of catching a live bear seemed dubious, but
all the poisoned meat that could be found
was buried at once, and Bowers and the
correspondent began building a trap to
catch a bear that had been making twelve-
inch tracks around the cabins. The Cuddy

THE BEAE "MONARCH." 191

boys rode about looking for bear, and one
of them lassoed an eagle that had water-
logged himself and was sitting stupidly on
a rock by the creek. The bird measured
nine feet across the wings. Messrs. Louis
and Taylor, owners of the Mutaw, received
the party hospitably and assisted in the
work of preparing the trap. But Mr. Tay-
lor forgot where he had put some of his
poison, and in forty-eight hours all the
dogs in the place, including the Examin-
er's two hounds, were stiffened out and
turned up their toes. Chopping off their
tails and pouring sweet oil down their
throats did not restore them.

No chance to lasso a bear presented it-
self, and as soon as the trap was completed
and baited with two live pigs the party
returned to Pine Mountain.

At last it became evident that the bears
on Mount Pinos could not be enticed into
a trap while they had their pick and choice
of the thousands of sheep that grazed on
the mountain. They preferred to do their

192 TKTJE BEAR STORIES.

own butchering and would not touch mut-
ton that was killed for them by anybody
else. A cougar raided a camp one night,
sprang upon the sheep from a willow
thicket and killed three within twenty
yards of the sleeping herder. The fastidi-
ous cougar cut their throats, sucked their
blood and left their carcasses at the edge
of the thicket without eating the meat.
But the bears would not touch what the
cougar left.

Shortly after this the herders reported
that the bears were avoiding the sheep and
passing around the bands without making
an attack.

Apparently bruin had made a miscalcu-
lation in his calendar and was keeping
Lent in the wrong season, but his erratic
conduct was explained when some of the
herders admitted that they had put strych-
nine into several carcasses. Some of the
bears had got doses of poison large enough
to make them mortally unwell, but had
survived and sworn off eating mutton.

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 193

They disappeared from the vicinity of the
camps and grazing ground, and went into
solitary confinement in remote and deep
gorges, where nobody but a lunatic would
follow them.

The result of many weeks' hard work on
Mount Pinos was the acquirement of some
knowledge of the nature and eccentricities
of Ursus ferox, which was glibly imparted
by Tom, Dick and Harry, who assumed
that the mere fact of their having lived
near the mountains qualified them to
speak as authorities on the habits oi
bears.

One inspired idiot declared that the best
way to catch a grizzly was to give him
atropia, which would make him blind for
a day or two, and lead him along like a
tame calf. This genius was so enamored
of his great discovery that he went about
the country telling everybody that the
Examiner man was going to catch a grizzly
with atropia, and that he (the aforesaid

194 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

lunatic) was the inventor of the scheme
and general boss of the outfit

"A bear will do this," said one. "He will
do so and so," said another, and "you just
do that and he'll go right into the trap,"
said a dozen more. Everybody seemed to
be loaded to the guards with an assorted
cargo of general ignorance about bears,
which they were anxious to discharge upon
the Examiner expedition, but not one man
in the whole lot ever caught a grizzly, and
very few ever saw one.

As a matter of fact, determined by ex-
perience and observation, a grizzly will do
none of the things laid down as rules of
conduct for him by the wise men of the
mountains, but will do pretty much as he
pleases, and act as his individual whim
or desire moves him. It is a mistake to
generalize about bears from the actions of
one of the species. One bear will be bold
and inquisitive, and will walk right into
a camp to gratify his curiosity, while an-

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 195

other will carefully avoid man and all his
works.

The predictions of an ursine invasion of
Mount Pinos were not fulfilled and when
it became clear that the few grizzlies in
the neighborhood were too timid and wary
to be caught, the expedition struck camp
and moved on, leaving the traps set for
luck.

Considerable annoyance was caused by a
discharged mule-packer, who carried away
tools required in trap building, and em-
bezzled quite a sum of money. The fellow
had attempted to impose upon the corre-
spondent by whittling out pine-bark mod-
els of bear's feet, with which to make
tracks around the trap; and had proposed
various swindling jobs to others of the
party, explaining that the "Examiner was
rich and they might as well get a hack at
the money." He had opened and read let-
ters intrusted to him for mailing, and had
proved himself generally a faithless scamp
and an unconscionable liar. A written de-

196 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

mand upon him, for restitution of his plun-
der, elicited only a coarse and abusive
letter, but there was no time to waste in
prosecuting the fellow and he was left in
the enjoyment of his booty and in such
satisfaction as the rascal mind of him
could derive from the fact that he had
succeeded in robbing his employer.

The big bear on the Mutaw never came
near the trap built for his special accom-
modation, notwithstanding the confident
assurances of the bear experts on the ranch
that he was sure to show up within forty-
eight hours. For two months after the
poisoning of his campanero no signs of the
large grizzly were seen anywhere near the
Mutaw, and the hogs roamed about the
hills unmolested.

After leaving Mount Pinos the expedi-
tion built several traps in the mountains
near trails frequented by bears. An old
grizzly that lived among the unsurveyed
and unnamed peaks between Castac Lake
and the Liebra Mountain absorbed the at-

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 197

mention of the hunters for some time. He
was an audacious marauder and killed his
beef almost within sight of the camp-fire.
Often at night a cow or steer could be
heard bellowing in terror, and in the morn-
ing a freshly killed animal would be found
in some hollow not far away, bearing
marks of bear's claws. Whitened bones
scattered all over the hills showed that the
bear had been the boss butcher of General
Beal's ranch for a long time. His average
allowance of beef appeared to be about two
steers a week, but he usually ate only half
a carcass, leaving the rest to the coyotes
and vultures.

One morning Bowers returned from a
hunt for the horses, two of which had been
struck and slightly wounded by the bear
a few nights before, and had run away,
and reported the discovery of a dead steer
within 150 yards of an unfinished trap,
about a quarter of a mile from camp. The
animal appeared to have been killed two
nights before, and the bear had made but

198 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

one meal off the carcass. As he might be
expected to return that night, all haste
was made to finish the trap. Bowers rode
out to Gorman's Station to get some nails
and honey, while the correspondent paid a
visit to one of General Deal's old corrals
and stole some planks to make a door. He
packed the planks up the mountain, and
was using the hammer and saw with great
diligence and a tremendous amount of
noise, when bruin sauntered down the
ridge, looked curiously at him and calmly
began eating an early supper, wholly in-
different to the noise of the hammer and
the presence of the man.

It was nearly dark when Bowers rode up
to the trap, his horse in a lather composed
of equal parts of perspiration and honey,
the latter having leaked profusely from
the cans tied to the saddle. Tossing the
nails to the correspondent, Bowers hastily
dismounted and went afoot up the ridge
toward the dead steer, intending to place
a can of honey near it. In about a mim-

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 199

ute Bowers was seen running from the
ridge in fifteen-foot jumps, and as he ap-
proached the trap he shouted: "The bear
is there now!"

"Is that so?" said the correspondent. "I
thought he had finished his supper and had
gone away by this time."

Bowers had approached to within forty
yards of the bear before seeing him, and
the bear had merely raised his head, taken
a look at the intruder and resumed his
eating. As it had become too dark to drive
nails, and there was no longer any reason
for finishing the door that night, Bowers
fetched the rifles from camp and the two
men went up the ridge to take a better
look at the bear. Had there been light
enough to make the rifle sights visible, it
would have been hard to resist the tempta-
tion of turning loose at the old fellow from
behind a convenient log; but it was impos-
sible to draw a bead on him, and it would
have been sheer foolhardiness to shoot and
take the chances of a fight in the dark with

200 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

a wounded grizzly. Besides, if shot at and
missed, the bear would probably not re-
turn, and all the cnances of getting him
into the trap would be lost. So the two
sat on a log and watched the grizzly till
the night came on thick and dark, when
they returned to camp.

The trap was finished the next day, but
a somewhat ludicrous accident destroyed
its possibilities of usefulness, and made it
quite certain that bruin would never be
caught in it. Not expecting a visit from
the bear, for at least two days, the corre-
spondent went up to the ridge just before
dark, made a rope fast to the remains of
a steer, and dragged him down to the trap.
Bowers had gone back to Ventura on busi-
ness, and the correspondent was alone on
the mountain ; when he went into the trap
to fix a can of honey upon the trigger, he
placed a stick under the door, in such a
way that if the door should fall he could
use the stick as a lever to pry it up, and

THE BEAK "MONAKCH." 201

so avoid an experience like Dad Coff-
man's.

The precaution was well taken. While
he was arranging the bait he heard snuf-
fling and the movement of some animal
outside. Supposing that some cow or per-
haps the burro was wandering about, he
paid no particular attention to the noise,
but when the bait was arranged and he
turned to go out he saw the muzzle of old
bruin poked into the door and his eyes
blinking curiously at the dark interior of
the trap. Bruin had come down for a feast
and had followed the trail of the steer's
remains with unexpected promptness. He
had scented the honey, which was more
alluring than stale beef, and evidently was
considering the propriety of entering the
trap to get his supper, which might con-
sist of honeycomb au naturel, with Exam-
iner man on the side.

The man in the trap deemed it highly
improper for the bear to intrude at that
time, and quickly decided the etiquette of

202 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

the case by kicking the trigger and letting
the door fall with a dull thud plump upon
the old grizzly's nose. A hundred and sixty
pounds falling four feet is no laughing
affair when it hits one on the nose, and
bruin did not make light of it. He was
pained and surprised, and he went away
more in sorrow than in anger, judging from
the tone of his expostulating grunts and
snorts.

When the snorts of the bear died away
in the distance, the correspondent pried
up the door, crawled out and cautiously
made his way through the dark woods to
his lonely camp.

At this time there were six traps scat-
tered through the mountains within a rad-
ius of sixty miles, all of them set and
baited, and the more distant ones watched
by men employed for that purpose. One
of the traps was on a mountain that was
not pastured by ca'tle, or sheep, and as
there were no acorns in that part of the
country, the bears h? 1 to rustle for a liring

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 203

and were unable to withstand the tempta-
tion offered by quarters of beef judiciously
exposed to their raids.

The bait scattered around this trap was
discovered by four bears, but for some
time they regarded it with suspicion, and
were afraid to touch it, possibly because
they detected the scent of man near it.
Gradually they became accustomed to it
and the signs of man's presence, and then
they began to quarrel over the meat, as
was plainly indicated by the disturbance
of the ground where their tracks met. Two
of the tracks were of medium size, one was
quite large and evidently made by a griz-
zly, and the fourth was enormous, being
fourteen inches long and nine inches wide.

The last-named track was not made by
a grizzly howrever. There were six toes on
the forefoot, and this peculiar deformity
was the distinguishing mark of a gigantic
cinnamon bear known to hunters as "Six-
Toed Pete."

It was almost invariably found, during

14

204 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

the long campaign in the wilderness, that
tracks over eleven inches in length were
made by cinnamon bears, and not by gen-
uine grizzlies, although some hunters de-
clare that the cinnamon is only a variety
of grizzly, and that the color is not
the mark of a different species. However
that may be, the difference between the
two varieties is very distinct, and as the
object of the expedition was the capture
of an indubitable California grizzly, no
special effort was made to trap any of the
big cinnamons.

The smaller bears soon gave up the con-
test for the beef and left the field to Pete
and the grizzly, who quarreled and fought
around it for several nights. At last the
grizzly gave Pete a thorough licking and
established his own right to the title of
monarch of the mountain. The decisive
battle occurred one moonlight night and
was witnessed from a safe perch in a fork
of a tree near the trap.

It was nearly 9 o'clock when the snap-

THE BEAB "MONAKCH." 205

ping of dry sticks indicated the approach
of a heavy animal through the brush, and
in a few moments the big grizzly came
into sight, walking slowly and sniffing sus-
piciously. A smart breeze was drawing
down the canyon, and the bear, being to
the windward, could not smell the man up
the tree, but he approached the meat cau-
tiously and seemed in no hurry for his sup-
per. While he was reconnoitering another
animal was heard smashing through the
thicket, and presently the huge bulk of Six-
Toed Pete loomed up in the moonlight at
the edge of the opening.

At the approach of the cinnamon the
grizzly rose upon his haunches and uttered
low, hoarse growls, and when the big fel-
low appeared within twenty feet of him,
he launched himself forward with surpris-
ing swiftness and struck Pete a blow on the
neck that staggered him. It was like one
of Sullivan's rushes in the ring, and the
blow of that ponderous paw would have
knocked out an ox; but Pete was no slouch

206 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

of a slugger himself, and he quickly re-
covered and returned the blow with such
good will that had the grizzly's head been
in the way it would have ached for a week
afterward.

Then the fur began to fly.

It was impossible to follow the move-
ments of the combatants in detail, as they
sparred, clinched and rolled about, but in
a general way Six-Toed Pete seemed to be
trying to make his superior weight tell by
rushing at the grizzly and knocking him
over, while the latter avoided the direct
impact of the cinnamon's great bulk by
quick turns and a display of agility that
was scarcely credible in so unwieldy look-
ing an animal. Once the cinnamon seized
the grizzly by the throat and for a moment
hushed the latter's fierce growls by chok-
ing off his wind, but the grizzly sat down,
threw his arm over Pete's neck, placed his
other forepaw upon Pete's nose, sunk his
claws in deep, and instantly broke the hold,
As they parted, the grizzly made a "icious

THE BEAK "MONABCH." 207

sweep with his right paw and caught Pete
on the side of the head. The blow either
destroyed the cinnamon's left eye or tore
the flesh around it, so that the blood
blinded him on that side, for during the
rest of the fight he tried to keep his right
side toward the grizzly and seemed unable
to avoid blows delivered on his left.

For at least a quarter of an hour the
combat raged, without an instant's cessa-
tion, both belligerents keeping up a terrific
growling, punctuated with occasional
howls of pain. Neither could get a fair blow
at the other's head. Had the grizzly struck
the cinnamon with the £ull force of his tre-
mendous arm, Pete's skull would have
surely been smashed. Pete finally got
enough, broke away from the Monarch and
fled into the brush, a badly used up bear;
and he never came back.

Having won his supper by force of arms,
the grizzly was no longer suspicious of the
bait, and he ate up the best part of a quar-
ter of beef before he left the battle ground.

208 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

He soon became accustomed to the trap,
and regularly came there for his meals,
which were gradually placed nearer the
door and finally inside the structure. A
piece of meat was tied to the trigger, and
one morning the door was found closed,
and a great ripping and tearing was heard
going on inside. The Monarch was caught
at last.

Upon the approach of the men, the griz-
zly became furious and made the heavy
logs tremble and shake in his efforts to get
out and resent the indignity that had been
placed upon him. Had he concentrated
his attack on any one spot and been left
to wreak his rage without interruption he
would have been out in a few hours, but he
was not permitted to work long at any
place. Wherever he began work he en-
countered the end of a heavy stake which
was jabbed against his nose and head with
all the power of a man's arms.

Day and night from the moment he was
found in the trap, the Monarch was

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 209

watched and guarded, and he kept two
men busy all the time. Although his at-
tention was distracted from the trap as
much as possible, he found time to gnaw
and rip a ten-inch log almost in two, and
sometimes he made the bark and splinters
fly in a way that was calculated to make
a nervous man loathe the job of standing
guard over him. For six days the Mon-
arch was so busy trying to break jail that
he had no time to fool away in eating. Sol-
itary confinement developed in him a most
malicious temper and he flew into a rage
whenever food was thrown to him.

But his applications for a writ of habeas
corpus were persistently denied by a man
with a club, and the Monarch at last
cooled down a little and condescended to
take a light lunch of raw venison. He was
given two days for reflection and medita-
tion, and when he seemed to be in a more
reasonable mood, the work of preparing
him for a visit to the city was begun.

A running noose was made in a stout

210 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

chain and put into the trap between twc.
of the logs, and when the bear stepped his
forepaw into the noose it was drawn taut
and held by four men outside. Despite the
strain upon the chain the bear easily threw
the noose off with his other paw, letting
the men fall backwards in a heap on the
ground. Again and again the trick was
tried but the noose would not hold.

Then the method of working the chain
was changed and the noose let down
through the top of the trap, and after many
failures it was drawn sharply up round his
arm near the shoulder, where it held. Ten
hours were consumed in the effort to secure
one leg and the Monarch fought furiously
every minute of the time, biting the chain,
seizing it with his paws and charging
about in his prison as though he were
crazy. He was utterly reckless of conse-
quences to himself, and he bit the iron SQ
savagely that he splintered his teeth and
wholly destroyed his longer tushes.

Having secured one leg, it was compar-

Large Black Bear.— Page 260.

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 211

atively easy to get another chain around
his other pa.w and two ropes around his
hind legs, and then he was stretched out,
spread-eagle fashion, on the floor of the
trap.

The next move was to fasten a heavy
chain around his neck in such a way that it
could not choke him, and to accomplish
this it was necessary to muzzle the Mon-
arch. A stick about eighteen inches long
and two inches thick was held under his
nose, and he promptly seized it in his jaws.
Before he dropped it a stout cord was made,
fast to one end of the stick, passed over his
nose, around the other end of the stick,
under his jaw, and then wound around his
muzzle and the stick in such a way as to
bind his jaws together, a turn back of his
head holding the gag firmly in place.

The Monarch was now bound, gagged
and utterly helpless, but he never ceased
roaring with rage at his captors and strug-
gling to get just one blow at them with
his paw. It was an easy matter for a man

212 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

to get upon his back, put a chain collar
around his neck, and fasten the heavy
chain with a swivel to the collar. The col-
lar was kept in place by a chain rigged
like a martingale and passed under his
arms and over his back. A stout rope
made fast about his body completed the
Monarch's fetters and the gag was then
removed from the royal mouth. The King
of the mountains was a hopeless prisoner-
Gulliver, tied hand and foot by the Lilli-
putians.

The next morning Monarch was lashed
upon a rough sled — a contrivance known
to lumbermen as a "go-devil" — to make the
journey down the mountain. The first
team of horses procured to haul him could
not be driven anywhere near the bear. They
plunged and snorted and became utterly
unmanageable, and finally they broke
away and ran home. The next team was
but little better, and small progress was
made the first day.

At night the Monarch was released from

THE BEAK "MONARCH." 213

the "go-devil" and secured only by his
chains to a large tree. The ropes were
removed from his legs, and he was allowed
considerable freedom to move about, but
a close watch was kept upon him. After
several futile efforts to break away, he ac-
cepted the situation, stretched himself at
the foot of the tree and watched the camp-
fire all night.

In the morning the ropes were replaced,
after a lively combat, and the bear was
again lashed to the sled. Four horses were
harnessed to it and the journey was re-
sumed. Men with axes and bars went
ahead to make a road, and it was with
no small amount of labor that they made
it passable. The poor old bear was
slammed along over the rocks and through
the brush, but he never whimpered at the
hardest jolts. With all the care that could
be observed, it was impossible to make his
ride anything but a series of bumps, slides
and capsizes, and the progress was slow.
At the steep places men held the sled back

214 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

with ropes and tried to keep it right side
up.

Four days on a "go-devil" is no pleasure
excursion, even for a tough grizzly, and
when the Monarch was released from his
uncomfortable vehicle, at the foot of the
mountain, he seemed glad to get a chance
to stretch himself and rest. For nearly
a week he was left free of all fetters ex-
cept the chain on his neck and the rope
around his body, and he spent his days in
slumber and his nights eating and digging
a great hole in the ground. Having con-
vinced himself that he could neither break
his chain nor bite it in .two, he accepted
the situation with surly resignation and
asked only to be let alone and fed de-
cently.

While the bear was recuperating and
becoming reconciled to what couldn't be
helped, a cage was being built of Oregon
pine lumber with an iron-barred door, and
when it was finished he was dragged into
it by the heels. As soon as he saw the

THE BEAK "MONARCH." 215

ropes, Monarch knew that mischief was
afoot, and when a man began throwing
back into the hole the dirt that he had
dug out, he mounted the heap and silently
but strenuously began to dig for himself
a new hole. He worked twice as fast as
two men with shovels, and in his efforts to
escape he only assisted in filling up the old
hole.

For some time he baffled all attempts to
get ropes on his forepaws, having learned
the trick of throwing them off and seizing
the loops with his teeth, but he was soon
secured and stretched out on his back. The
Monarch roared his remonstrances and did
his best to get even for the outrages that
had been done to his rights and his feel-
ings, but the ropes were tough and he could
not get a chance to use his enormous
strength. He was dragged on his back
into the cage, the door was dropped and
the ropes were removed, but the chain re-
mained around his neck and that was made
fast to the bars. As soon as he found him-

216 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

self shut up in a box the angry and insulted
bear ceased roaring and in a short time he
philosophically stretched himself on the
floor and wondered what would happen
next.

The next thing that happened to him
was the standing of his cage on end, but
that did not appear to disturb him. A
wagon was backed up, and the cage was
tilted down again and placed upon the
wagon, which was then hauled down the
canyon and along the river bed to a little
water station on the Southern Pacific Rail-
road, where the cage was put upon a stock
car. The car was provisioned with a quar-
ter of beef, and a lot of watermelons, and
attached to a freight train, then men who
had helped to bring the bear out of the
mountains waved their hats, and the Mon-
arch caught a last glimpse of his native
hills as the train whirled him and the cor-
respondent northward.

It must have been a very strange, per-
haps terrifying, thing to the wild grizzly

THE BEAE "MONARCH." 217

to be jolted along for two days on a rat-
tling, bumping, lurching freight train, with
the shrieking of steam whistles and the
ringing of bells, but he endured it all he-
roically and gave no sign of fear. He ate
well when food was given him, taking
meat from his captor's hands through the
bars, and slept soundly when he was tired.
He seemed to know and yield a sort of
obedience to the correspondent, but re-
sented with menacing growls the imperti-
nent curiosity of strangers who came to
look at him through the bars.

In every crowd that came to see him
there was at least one fool afflicted with
a desire to poke the bear with a stick, and
constant vigilance was necessary to pre-
vent such witless persons from enraging
him. At Mojave, when the correspondent
went to the car, he found a dozen idlers
inside, and one inspired lunatic was stir-
ring up the Monarch, who was rapidly los-
ing his temper. The cage would not have
held him five minutes had he once tackled

218 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

the bars in a rage, and it was only the
moral influence of the chain around his
neck that kept him quiet. When the cor-
respondent sprang into the car, the griz-
zly's eyes were green with anger, and in
a moment more there would have been
the liveliest kind of a circus on that freight
train. Hustling the crowd out with un-
ceremonious haste — incidentally throwing
a few maledictions at the man with the
stick — the correspondent drove the Mon-
arch back from the bars, and ordered him
to lie down, and for the next half hour rode
in the car with him and talked him into
a peaceable frame of mind.

From the freight depot on Townsend
Street the cage was hauled on a truck to
Woodward's Gardens, and under the di-
rections of Louis Ohnimus, superintendent
of the gardens, the Monarch was trans-
ferred to more comfortable quarters. His
cage was backed up to one of the perma-
nent cages, both doors were opened, and
he was invited to move, but he refused

THE BEAK "MONARCH." 219

to budge until his chain was passed around
the bars and hauled by four stout men. The
grizzly resisted for a few minutes, but sud-
denly decided to change his quarters and
went with a rush and a roar, wheeling
about and striking savagely through the
bars at the men. But Mr. Ohnimus had
expected just such a performance and
taken such precautions that nobody was
hurt and no damage done.

The Monarch had shown himself a brave
fighter and an animal of unusual courage
in every way. He had endured the roughest
kind of a journey without weakening, and
compelled respect and admiration from the
moment of his capture. But when the
strain and excitement were over, and he
was left to himself, the effects became ap-
parent, and for two or three days he was
a sick bear. He had a fever and would
not eat for a time, but Mr. Ohnimus took
charge of him, doctored him with medi-
cines good for the ills of bear flesh, and

15

220 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

soon tempted back his appetite with rab-
bits and pigeons.

Soon the Monarch was sufficiently con-
valescent to rip the sheet iron from the side
of his cage and break a hole through into
the hyena's quarters. By night he was on
his muscle in great shape, and Superin-
tendent Ohnimus sent for the correspon-
dent to sit up with him all night and help
keep the half-ton grizzly from tearing
things to pieces. By watching the old fel-
low and talking to him now and then they
managed to distract his attention from
mischief most of the time, but he got in
considerable work and rolled up several
sheets of iron as though they were paper.

It was evident that no ordinary cage
would hold him, and men were at once
employed to line one of the compartments
with heavy iron of the toughest quality
and to strengthen it with bars and angle
iron. This made a perfectly secure place
of confinement. A watch was kept on the
Monarch by the garden keepers during the

THE BEAR "MONARCH. " 221

day, and by the superintendent and the cor-
respondent every night, until the work was
finished and the Monarch transferred.

The grizzly is now safely housed in the
first appartment of the line of cages, and
under the watchful care of Mr. Ohnimus
will soon recover his lost flesh and energy
and again be the magnificent animal that
he was when he was the undisputed mon-
arch of the Sierra Madre.

LATEST BULLETIN.
Monarch a True Grizzly.

"Monarch," the Examiner's big grizzly,
received many visitors yesterday, but, hav-
ing been up all night trying the strength
of his new house, he declined to stand up,
and paid but little attention to the crowd.
His chain had been fastened to the bars
of his cage with three half hitches and a
knot, and the knot was held in place by
a piece of wire. During the night he re-
moved the wire, untied all the knots and

15

222 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

half hitches and hauled the chain inside,
where nobody could meddle with it. Hav-
ing the chain all to himself, Monarch
was indifferent to his visitors and lazily
stretched himself on his back, with one
arm thrown back over his head.

He had a good appetite yesterday and
got away with a leg of lamb and a lot of
bread and apples. He ate a little too
heartily and had the symptoms of fever.
Today he will not get so much food. The
best time to see him is when he eats, be-
cause he lies down all other times of the
day. He has breakfast at 10 a. m., lunch
at 1 p. m. and dinner at 3 p. m.

Monarch still looks travelworn and thin,
but he is brightening up, and when the
abrasions of the skin, made by ropes and
chains, are healed up and his hair grown
again on the bare spots he will be more pre-
sentable. His broken teeth trouble him
some and it will be some time before he
will feel as well as he did before he was
caught.

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 223

Several artists went to Woodward's Gar-
dens today to sketch and photograph the
bear, but he refused to pose, so they did
not get the best results. It would be un-
wise to stir him up and excite him at pres-
ent, and unless the artists can catch him
at his meals they will have to wait a little
while for a chance to study the grizzly un-
der favorable conditions.

Sculptor Rupert Schmidt has made an ex-
cellent model in clay of Monarch, which
will be a valuable assistance in designs
requiring the introduction of the California
emblem.

Mr. Schmidt said:

"I am very glad to have the opportunity
to study the real grizzly, and I find him
very different from the models generally
accepted. I have modeled many bears, but
never one like this. You see in this de-
sign some figures of bears (showing a wax
model of decorative capitals). These were
intended to be grizzlies, but you see they
have the Roman nose, which is characteris-

224 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

tic of the black bear. No other bear that
I ever saw had the broad forehead and
strong, straight nose of the grizzly. He
has a magnificent head, and I think all
artists will be glad of a chance to study
him. I have inquired for grizzlies in
zoological gardens all over the world, but
never found one before."

Monarch has a big, intelligent-looking
head and a kindly eye, and is not dis-
posed to quarrel with visitors, but he ob-
jects to any meddling with his chain, and
will not submit to any insults. It was
necessary yesterday to keep a watchman
between the cage and the crowd to prevent
people from throwing things at the bear
and stirring him up. Monarch is getting
along very well and taking his troubles
quite philosophically; but he has had a
rough experience, is worn out with fight-
ing and worry, is sore in body and spirit
and needs rest. It is a difficult thing to
keep alive in captivity a wild bear of his
age, and undue excitement might throw

THE BEAK "MONABGH." 225

him into a fatal fever. If Superintendent
Ohnimus succeeds in his efforts to cure the
Monarch of his bruises and put him into
good condition, he will deserve great
credit, and the visitors are requested not to
make the task more difficult by worrying
the captive. No other zoological garden
in the world has a California grizzly, and
it would be a great loss to the menagerie to
be established in the Park if the Monarch
should die.

It is not surprising that many people
cannot tell a grizzly bear, even when they
see one, as many zoologists even differ
widely in regard to the characteristics of
the king of bears. It is astonishing how
little is really known in regard to the griz-
zly bear. Many text-books contain only a
general notice of the great animal, while
those naturalists who have written descrip-
tions of him do by no means agree. This
is due to their lack of specimens. The
grizzly is so powerful and unyielding a
beast that but few have been captured

226 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

alive. There have not been individuals
enough of the species studied to admit of
their being fully generalized. Different
naturalists described the grizzly from the
single specimen that came within their
notice, and hence their various descriptions
are far apart. It is a fact that hardly two
of the animals taken are exactly alike in
color or habits.

In order to definitely settle the question,
Prof. Walter E. Bryant, of the Acad-
emy of Sciences, was yesterday induced to
visit the bear. He has made the mammals
of the Pacific Coast his study for years, and
probably knows more than anyone else
about California bears.

He examined Monarch very carefully,
noted his every point, and then examined
just as carefully the other bears at the
gardens.

When he had completed his investiga-
tion and stood once more before Monarch's
cage, he was asked:

"Well, what is he?"

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 227

"He is a true grizzly bear," answered
Professor Bryant, and he added, "a mighty
big one, too.

"I never before saw one of the animals
with as dark a coat as his," he continued;
"but that is nothing. The bear is a true
grizzly, and has all the characteristics of
one. As far as his color is concerned, griz-
zlies are of all colors; there is almost as
much variety in that regard among bears
as among dogs/'

"How do you know it is a grizzly?" was
asked.

"Well, in the first place, the claws on his
forefeet are longer and stronger than those
of any other species. Then his head is
larger than that of other bears, and his
muzzle is longer and heavier. Another and
more distinguishing feature i» the height
of his shoulders. Just back of his neck is
the tallest point. From there his back
slopes down towards his haunches. The
black bear, on the other hand, has low
shoulders, and is tallest at a point rather

228 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

back of the middle of the body. There are
numerous other means of distinguishing
this bear. His teeth are very much larger
and stronger than those of the others, and
the entire structure of the skull is peculiar
to the grizzly. He has neither the short
muzzle of the European bear such as you
see in the pit, nor the rounded muzzle of
the black bear. There are, of course, many
minor points that only a naturalist would
observe, but it is sufficient to say that he
lacks none of the essential qualities of the
grizzly bear, and has none of those of the
other varieties.

"His coat is almost black, to be sure, but
it is very different from the glossy black
of his neighbor. If you observe the griz-
zly's hair, you will see that a great deal of
it is a rusty brown and in certain lights
seems to be very far from black. This vari-
ation in the color of the hair is a peculiar
characteristic of the grizzly. That lanky
mane is another. His legs, you observe, are

THE BEAR "MONARCH." 229

darker than his body. This is another
characteristic of the California grizzly.

"This animal is thin now, doubtless from
the hard time he had while he was being
brought here. When he gets fat his hair
will have a very different appearance. It
will be interesting to watch him when he
sheds his hair. The coat that comes after
may be altogether of another color. That
grizzly, I should say, is comparatively a
young bear, and when he gets older the
gray that originally gave him his name will
very likely be pronounced."

THE END.

EDITED BY PIERRE N. BERINGER.

THE LOUISIANA SPECTACLED BEAR.

Tremarctos Ornatus.

Some of our scientists have very care-
fully divided the Genus Ursus into twelve
species. While I will admit that these gen-
tlemen are conscientious and that they are
thorough in their researches, I wish to
point to the fact that they have entirely
overlooked three or four species found on
the Pacific Coast.

Many writers have completely ignored
the spectacled bear of Louisiana. Is he the
representative of another genus? Does he
belong to the Genus Helarctos (helios, the
"sun," and arctos, "bear") credited by the
majority of writers with basking in the
sun, or because of the peculiar markings
of his chest, representing a sunburst? He
resembles the Helarctos Malayanus of the
Malayan archipelago or the Bruang of

233

234 TKUE BEAR STORIES.

Java. Or is he the Sloth Bear, Prochilous
(or Melursus) labiatusf This bear has been
carefully classified as a separate genus
found from the Ganges to Ceylon. His de-
scription fits rather loosely the so-called
sloth of Louisiana. Possibly the Louisiana
specimen is of the Genus Tremarctos, of
which the learned people tell us there is
but a solitary species carefully isolated in
the Andes of Chile and Peru. I shall call
the Louisiana specimen by the name given
him by our poet, the Spectacled Bear,
Tremarctos Qrnatus, and the professors
who have entirely overlooked his existence
may classify him later when they find time.
At one time the Honey Bear was classified
as a "Bradipus," or sloth, because of its
liability to lose its incisors. It was there-
fore set down as one of the Edentata. It has
also been styled the Jungle Bear, the Lipped
Bear, and names as various as the investi-
gators'fancy. The Tremarctos Ornatus of
Louisiana, or spectacled bear, is not a sloth.
He does not belong to the Edentata, neither

THE SPECTACLED BEAR. 235

is he lazy. He is essentially the clown of
all bears, a very intelligent animal, and in
many cases the intellectual superior of his
keeper. He is active to a degree, and will
perform the queerest antics for the amuse-
ment of the onlooker. He is quaintly con-
scious of his mirth-provoking powers, much
as a child playing "smarty." He will
quickly climb an inclined log or tree, and
then slide down either in an upright posi-
tion, clasping the log with the knees, or he
will slide "down the banister" as a child
might. I have seen the merry fellow grab
his tail in his mouth and roll over and over
until dizzy.

His snout is almost hairless, narrow and
proboscis like, and the nostrils and lips are
mobile. He shapes these almost into a
pipe, through which his long tongue is shot
out, drawing things in or sucking them up.
It has claws of a bluish gray that are longer
than those of any other of the Ursidae. The
hair is very long, of a deep brown black.

There is a sunburst upon the chest of a
la

236 TKUE BEAR STORIES

white or fulvous hue. The ears are small
and scarcely distinguishable, owing to the
shaggy mane. The fur is rather coarse and
very long.

It lives mainly upon honey and vege-
tables and sugar cane. In captivity it will
very gratefully subsist upon oatmeal and
occasional sweets. The animal is easily
tamed, and will become attached to its
keeper, giving an exhibition of exuberant
joy at his approach. It is a jolly good fel-
low, and shows a marked preference for
liquors, refusing all others when it may
have champagne.

It will sit on its hind legs and make faces
at the onlooker, waving its arms in the most
grotesque fashion, while it rolls its body
from side to side. This is one of the char-
acteristics that has impressed the negro
with the sacredness of this "Voodoo Bear."

II.

THE GRIZZLY.

Ursus Eorribilis or Ferox.

This is the great grizzly of California,
whose habits have been described by many
writers. It is a shy animal, not nearly as
ferocious as has been claimed. "It will al-
ways run away if it can," says General
Dodge, "and never attacks unless it is cor-
nered or wounded." Johnson says "the
grizzly is the king of all our animals, and
can destroy by blows from his paws the
powerful bison of the plains; wolves will
not even touch the carcass of the dreaded
monster, and, it is said, stand in such awe
that they refrain from molesting deer that
he has slain. Horses also require careful
training before they can be taught to allow
its hide to be placed upon their backs."

In the beautiful legend of the Good Poet
the grizzly is the forefather of the Indian,

837

238 TETJE BEAR STORIES.

and the Indian gives many proofs to show
his descent from the grizzly and the Spirit
of the Mountain. I want to add a curious
fact: The grizzly is the only one of the
Ursidae that moves his toes and fingers in-
dependently of one another just like a man.
Also the bear walks with his foot full upon
the ground. In further proof the grizzly,
when young, and all other bears, except
one, descend a tree backward and head up,
as a man would. The clown bear, or spec-
tacled bear, will sometimes descend head
down and enjoy a good laugh over it. At
least he seems to laugh. After the grizzly
has attained bulk and weight with age, he
cannot climb trees, as his claws are not
strong enough to sustain his weight.

A short time after "Monarch," the large
grizzly, arrived in San Francisco, my model,
a very considerate young person, who loved
all animals, came to the studio one day
with the story that she had made friends
with the great beast. It was about the time
when "Monarch" was being starved. He

THE GRIZZLY. 239

had been removed from the pit to the cage.
With very little forethought the cage was
built without a cover, and "Monarch" was
found one night making an attempt to es-
cape. He was prodded back with red-hot
irons. It was not possible to work about
the cage, and "Monarch" must be confined
in smaller quarters. A very small cage
was dropped into the enclosure; this had
a slide door and was to serve as a trap. I
believe the grizzly is the quickest of all ani-
mals. Six times a live chicken was fastened
in the small cage, and six times ^Mon-
arch's" long arm had literally "swiped*
that fowl. So quick was he that the slide
fell only as he was already safely crunching
its bones. At the seventh attempt he was
a little slow and was caught. After that
the iron workers placed the roof in posi-
tion. The trapping of the monster took
six days, and "Monarch" received only the
food he managed to get from the trap, and
that which my tender-hearfed model was
feeding him (apples and candy) surrepti

240 THE GRIZZLY.

tiously. A« this was against the orders of
the keeper, the young woman could feed
the bear only at irregular intervals. She
continued her kindnesses to him after he had
been again given the freedom of the larger
cage. Then she went away from the city.
She was gone for two years. She married
and assumed the rotund proportions of a
staid matron, and when next I saw her I
joked her about this, saying that she was
nearly as fat as her old friend "Monarch."
At this she was indignant. "Indeed," she
said, "animals are less forgetful than man,
and 'Monarch' undoubtedly will remember
me, even if I am not the slim artist's model
I once was." I told her "Monarch" was far
too much like a man, and that he was now
satisfied to look upon the world as well
lost, and that short of his dinner there was
little that could move him from a comforta-
ble position upon his back, his toes in the
air, apparently content, and like a philoso-
pher, wondering why the human displays
so much curiosity. "I'll bet he won't stir,"

THE GRIZZLY. 241

I said. The upshot of this conversation was
that we found ourselves just outside the
railing gazing at his lazy majesty. He
rolled his head slowly from side to side,
eyeing each newcomer with his bead-like
eyes. Suddenly the lady in the case said,
"Oh, you dear old darling!" "Monarch"
seemed electrified; he rose as quickly as
possible — certainly he had grown fat — and
then he rushed to the side of the cage. He
was not satisfied with looking at her from
his ordinary standpoint, but rose upon his
feet, extending himself his entire height,
that he might better look upon the friend
of times of trouble. She held up an apple.
"Monarch" dropped to his feet, placed his
snout as far out as the bars allowed, and
opened his immense jaws. She threw the
apple, and the bear sat himself down con-
tentedly to chew it. I firmly believe that
young woman could have walked into the
cage with an apron full of apples and es-
caped without injury. "Monarch" remem-
bered his friend.

III.

THE POLAR BEAR.

Thalassarctos Maritimus.

Much uncertainty prevails respecting the
generic classification of the bears. Wallace
has divided them into five genera or sub-
genera, and fifteen species. Wood gives
eighteen, and Gray says twelve. The ap-
pearance of the bear at different seasons
has led to much error in classification. The
practical mountaineer will tell you of some
three or four species in California that have
been given notice of as the young of an-
other species, or that have never been men-
tioned by the learned gentlemen who usual-
ly study bear life in the seclusion of a li-
brary or with the help of a strong field tel-
escope. A glance at the teeth of the bear
will tell you that they incline rather to the
vegetable diet. Their ferocity is almost al-
ways exaggerated. Their courage is des-

242

THE POLAE BEAK. 243

perate in self-defense, but it is seldom that
they become the aggressor. The brain of
the bear is very highly developed, and they
soon learn all kinds of accomplishments.
The lion is an uncouth boor in comparison.
The Polar Bear, Thalassarctos Nariti-
mus, is the only representative of the ge-
HUS. He is an almost wholly carnivorous
animal, his food consisting of fishes and
seals, which he skillfully captures. He can
swim better than any other bear, and has
been known to swim a strait forty miles
wide. The fur is silver white tinged with
yellow. This color is variable in specimens,
and according to the seasons. The head is
much smaller than that of the grizzly or
black bear, and is ferret-like, with a decided
downward curve to the nose. The nose
does not possess the flexibility of that of
the rest of the bear family, although the
polar bear has the higher development of
the sense of smell. Johnson says that the
flesh is good to eat, but other writers do
not agree with him. Kane was poisoned by

244 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

eating of the liver. In speaking of a cap-
ture De Vere wrote as follows : "We dressed
her liver and ate it, which in taste liked us
well, but it made us all sick * * * for
all their skins came off, from the foot to
the head, but they recovered again, for
which we gave God hearty thanks." Hall
says that the Eskimos of Cumberland
Sound likewise believe the liver to be
poisonous, even for the dogs. Ross says all
who partook of the meat suffered from se-
vere headaches, and later the skin peeled
from the body. Greely says his party
largely lived upon the meat, and that it
was coarse, tough, the fat having a decided-
ly rank flavor.

I believe that the physiognomist may fol-
low the characteristics of an animal by his
facial expression, and that with the aid of
a knowledge of the cranial development he
can gauge the mental caliber of the beast.
Following this system and adding to it the
testimony of credible explorers, it is quick-
ly shown that the polar bear is treacherous

THE POLAR BEAR. 245

and intractable. While he is not the wise
animal the grizzly is, he is more cunning
and is certainly not a coward.

There are times when he is not content
with being let alone, but will take the ag-
gressive. Greely writes: "Doctor Cope-
land was surprised only fifty yards from
the ship by a bear which broke from a bar-
rier of ice hummocks, galloped up to within
five paces, reared up and struck him down
with both forepaws. Copeland had no time
to load his gun, but as the animal caught
his clothes, he swung the butt across his
snout. This and the noise of approaching
comrades put the bear to flight, and he
started off with the swinging gallop pecul-
iar with him."

The mother bear and cubs display a
great fondness for one another. Koldeway
says: "No sooner did the young ones per-
ceive the hunter than they galloped toward
their mother, who in two strides turned
and stood by them, with such rage ex-
pressed in all her actions that we knew we

246 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

must be careful. Finding, however, that
they were unhurt, she seemed to think only
of bringing them to a place of safety."

Some authorities have it that only the
she bear hibernates and that the male
continues in the active exercise of all his
faculties. Ross weighed a polar bear
which tipped the scales at 1,131 pounds;
Lyon saw one which weighed 1,600 pounds;
Dr. Neale tells of one measuring eleven feet
exclusive of the tail. Senator Wm. P. Frye
has the skin of one, presented to him by an
explorer, which measures nine feet seven
inches exclusive of the tail of two inches.
Its girth around the body just back of the
forelegs is ten feet.

IV.
THE CINNAMON BEAR.

Ursus Cinnamoneous.

The Cinnamon Bear has been called a va-
riety of black bear. I am inclined to be-
lieve it a separate genus. The head has
many points of difference. It is wider. The
eyes are set deeper, and closer together.
There is a better breadth of brain. The
feet are smaller. The fur is rather longer
than that of the black bear and much
softer. The color is dark chestnut, and as
the bear ages there is an occasional gray
hair. The cinnamon is more dignified than
the black bear, and he also remembers an
injury longer. A baby cinnamon was cap-
tured by a friend of mine and brought to
the city. A chain was placed about its
neck, and this was attached to a peg that
was hammered in the ground. As soon as
I heard of the coming of his bearship I hur-

247

248 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

ried over and made his acquaintance. He
ate a quart of milk soaked into as much
bread as it would hold, and enjoyed it
greatly. He chewed on my finger every
time I dipped it into sugared water without
biting.

I left him fast asleep. When I returned
in the afternoon he was walking from side
to side, shaking his head, and howling
most dolefully. The cry was much like that
of a child, only louder and more disagree-
able. He was hungry. I went to him and
I said, "Stop it" At this he howled so it
made my head ache. I picked him up, and
with the aid of a shingle, I gave him a
spanking, just as you would a bad boy.
This stopped his howling, and then his mas-
ter came and fed him.

After this spanking it was very evident
that he did not care for my acquaintance.
He persistently refused to recognize me.
As I approached him his ears would go
back, and his fur would rise. He had de-
cided to cut my acquaintance.

THE CINNAMON BEAR. 249

Some days after, I was watching a tennis
game in the next yard, standing with my
back to baby bruin. He couldn't overlook
the opportunity to get even, and, watching
his chance, he fastened his teeth in the calf
of my leg.

V.
THE BLACK BEAR OF CALIFORNIA.

Ursus Calif oruiensis.

This bear we will label for convenience
Ursus Calif or niensis, because the title of
Ursus Americanus has dignified the small
black bear of the Eastern states. There
are, however, three species of the black
bear in California that are known, and
there may be more. The large black bear of
California reaches very large proportions.
I have seen some that might weigh from 800
to 1,000 pounds. It is hunted for its fur,
which is uniform in color, and for its flesh,
which is quite good, either smoked or fresh.
This animal will never seek an encounter
with man. I remember my original intro-
duction to a bear of this species. It was
in the state of Washington. Owing to ill
health I had been staying at what is known
there as a ranch. A ranch in the western

250

THE BLACK BEAR. 251

Washington forests generally consists of a
shake hut or log house, and a promise by
the "rancher" that he will soon clear
enough ground to raise something. Gener-
ally this vague something is a mortgage.
This particular rancher had a cow, and this
cow often strayed away into the timber and
had to be looked after when milking time
came.

One day, in the exuberance of new
found health, I was taking the greatest of
pleasure in chasing that cow toward the
"shed" road to the ranch. I was feeling
especially good, and I was jumping over
fallen trees, making short cuts and throw-
ing broken branches and an occasional
stone at the old Jersey.

Suddenly I stopped before an extra high
log, and gathering myself together, I
jumped high over it I landed upon the up-
turned belly of an old she bear. There was
a sound like the escape of gas from a rub-
ber bag. I passed the cow like a streak of
lightning. When I had run a considerable

17

p

252 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

distance I turned my head and saw the
bear running in the opposite direction. I
did not stop, however, and I got to the
ranch nearly an hour before the old cow.

In the shingle mills of the North the Nor-
wegian hands have the same veneration for
the bear as the Indian. They always
speak of him not as a bear, but as "the old
man with the fur coat on."

VI.

QUAINT INDIAN LORE

IN REGARD TO THE MYSTICAL POWER OF THE
BEAR AS A GREAT MEDICINE.

This is a legend of the Ojibwa Indians as
told by Sikassige, the officiating priest of
the Ojibwas at White Earth, Minnesota:

In the beginning were created two men
and two women. They had no power of
thought or reason. Then the Almighty
took them into his hands that they might
multiply, and he made them reasonable be-
ings. He paired them, and from this
sprung the Indians.

Then when there were people the Great
Spirit placed them upon the earth; but he
soon observed that they were subject to
sickness, misery and death. Then the Man-
itou called upon the Sun Spirit (the Bear)
and asked him to instruct the people in the
Sacred Medicine. The Sun Spirit, in the

253

254 THE BLACK BEAR

form of a little boy, went to the earth and
was adopted by a woman who had a little
boy of her own.

This family went away in the autumn to
hunt, and during the winter the woman's
son diedy The parents were much dis-
tressed and decided to return to the village
and bury the body there. So they made
preparation to return, and as they traveled
along they would each evening erect poles
upon which the body was placed, to pre-
vent the wild beasts from devouring it.
When the dead boy was thus hanging upon
the poles, the adopted child, the Bear
Spirit, or Sun child, would play about the
camp and amuse himself, and finally told
his adopted father he pitied him and his
mother for their sorrow.

The adopted son said he could bring his
dead brother to life, whereupon the parents
expressed great surprise and desired to
know how that could be accomplished.

The adopted boy then had the party has
ten to the village, when he said: "Get the-

QUAINT INDIAN LORE. 255

woman to the wigwam of bark, put the
dead body in a covering of birch bark, and
place the body on the ground in the middle
of the wigwam." On the next morning,
when this had been done, the family and
friends went into the lodge and seated
themselves around the corpse.

Then they saw, through the doorway, the
approach of a bear, which gradually came
toward the wigwam, entered it, and placed
itself before the dead body, and said "Hu,
hu, hu," when he passed around toward the
left side, with a trembling motion, and as
he did so, the body began quivering, which
increased as the bear continued, until he
had passed around four times, when the
body came to life and stood up. Then the
bear called to the father, who was sitting
in the distant right hand corner of the wig-
wam, and said:

"My father is not an Indian. You are a
spirit son. Insomuch my fellow spirit now
as you are. My father now tobacco you
shall put. He speaks of only once to be

256 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

able to do it. Why he shall live here now
that he scarcely lives; my fellow spirit I
shall now go home."

The little bear boy was the one who did
this. He then remained among the Indians
and taught them the mysteries of the
Grand Medicine, which would assist them
to live. He also said his spirit could bring
a body to life but once, and he would now
return to the sun, from which they would
feel his influence.

This is called "Kwi-wi-senswed-di-tshi-
ge-wi-nip" — "Little boy, his work."

VII.
CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT THE BEAR.

With the different seasons the bear pre-
sents a varied appearance. There are times
when you would scarce recognize the same
animal. In the autumn of the year the
bear takes on fat in preparation for hiber-
nating. At this time the fur is glossy and
long, and in the grizzly almost a seal
brown.

A curious phenomenon now takes place
in the animal's digestive organs, which
gives it the capability of remaining the en-
tire winter in a state of lethargy, without
food and yet without losing condition. As
the stomach is no longer furnished with
food, it soon becomes quite empty, and, to-
gether with the intestines, is contracted
into a very small space. No food can now
pass through the system, for an obstruc-
tion, a mechanical one — technically called

257

258 TEUE BEAR STORIES.

the "tappen" — blocks the entrance to the
passage and remains in this position until
spring. The "tappen" is composed almost
entirely of pine leaves and the various sub-
stances which the bear scratches out of the
ants' nests or the hives of bees. During
the season of hibernation, the bear gains a
new skin on its feet. It will remain in its
den until about the middle of April or the
beginning of May, and will emerge almost
as fat as when it entered, unless it has lost
the "tappen" too soon.

It will now be seen that the fur has un-
dergone a change. With the grizzly it has
the real grizzly hue; with the brown or
black bear it has a dead look. This is the
hungry season for the bear, and until fall,
when the berries are ripe and the salmon
run in the streams, his bearship has a hard
time of it. By the end of July and until the
middle of August the fur undergoes a fur-
ther change. The old coat is hanging upon
him in shreds, he is much emaciated, and
there is a hungry look in his eye. His ears

CUKIOUS FACTS. 259

appear abnormally large, and his paws
seem enormous. When the berries are ripe
and there are fish in the streams, the prepa-
ration for winter begins, the fur is sleek
and greasy-looking again. Mr. Bear is fat
and contented and ready to go into his long
sleep.

When he awakes one of the first things
he does is to suck his feet. This is done be-
cause the skin is new and tender.

In the picture illustrating the fight be-
tween the bear and the boy upon the log,
the bear is shown as he appears during the
emaciated season, a caricature of himself
when well fed. The bear in captivity re-
ceives his food at regular intervals and in
large quantities, and he loses many of the
marked characteristics of the bear in his
wild or untamed state. There is just as
much difference between a society leader
and a man who lives close to nature.

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

Miller, Joaquin
2397 True bear stories

T78
1900