34 The Grizzly Bear 



trapper named Baptiste Lamoche, whose head was 

 twisted to one side from the bite of a grizzly bear which 

 (according to his story) had sneaked up on him while 

 sitting cooking dinner in camp by the shore of a lake, and 

 had seized him by the neck with his teeth and started to 

 drag him off into the woods, but was shot by one of his 

 companions. 



Audubon, in "The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North 

 America" (1846), begins his article upon the grizzly bear 

 by saying: "While in the neighborhood where the grizzly 

 bear may possibly be hidden, the excited nerves will cause 

 the heart's pulsations to quicken if but a startled ground- 

 squirrel run past, the sharp click of the lock is heard and 

 the rifle hastily thrown to the shoulder before a second of 

 time has assured the hunter of the trifling cause of his 

 emotion." Audubon himself, on August 22, 1843, had 

 assisted in the killing of a grizzly bear on the Upper Mis- 

 souri and his words are significant. They paint very clearly 

 the frame of mind with which even a trained observer 

 approached the study of this animal, and go far toward 

 explaining why all the testimony relating to the grizzly 

 bear's wariness and disinclination to fight unless pressed 

 is uniformly overlooked by commentators, and only his 

 ferocity dwelt upon. Audubon, for instance, goes on to 

 cite Richardson's story of Bourasso, and the companion 

 seized at the side of his camp-fire and made off with, and 

 seems to regard it as quite what was to be expected. He 

 then sites Drummond, the botanist, who, in 1826, in the 

 Rockies, often came upon the grizzly bear unexpectedly, 

 but said that when he stood still and watched them, or 

 simply waved his hand, or made a noise with his tin box 



