370 Wild Beasts 



bear life, has taught the grizzly, by bitter experience, that 

 man is his undoubted overlord, so far as fighting goes ; 

 and this knowledge has become a hereditary character- 

 istic." With every advantage in arms, it is yet as danger- 

 ous to meet this brute fairly as to encounter a tiger on foot ; 

 and wherever that superiority has not been of long stand- 

 ing, grizzlies act like those that stalked Clark, charged 

 Fremont, confronted Long, and killed Ross Cox's voyageur 

 on the Columbia. 



Colonel Dodge, referring to those that had become 

 familiar with firearms, says that "a grizzly never attacks 

 unless when wounded, or when he is cornered." This is, 

 however, too general a statement. As one rides out of the 

 Tejon Pass into the Tulare Valley, there is, a little to the 

 right, an indentation or pocket in the foot-hills, in front 

 of which stand some huge bowlders. From behind one of 

 them a bear rushed out and destroyed the famous Andrew 

 Sublette before he had an opportunity to defend himself. 

 So far as that goes, the result might have been equally 

 fatal if he had fired, for the writer used to carry his rifle, 

 and it was far too light a weapon for such game as this. 

 Goday, who was as renowned a paladin of the plains as he, 

 related the circumstances of his death, and said that many 

 similar cases had occurred in his experience. He added 

 that one night, while sitting, as we were then, by the hearth 

 of his little house at the mountain's base, there was a 

 commotion outside at the corral, and going out in the dark- 

 ness to see what was wrong, an immense bear rushed at 

 him, and it was only by an instant that he got inside first. 

 Many persons have been assailed by grizzly bears they 



