James Capen Adams 41 



my dangers and privations, borne my burdens, and par- 

 taken of my meals. The reader may be surprised to hear 

 of a grizzly companion and friend, but Lady Washington 

 has been both to me. He may hardly credit the accounts 

 of my nesthng up between her and the fire to keep both 

 sides warm under the frosty skies of the mountains, but 

 all this is true." The details of her training, the gradual 

 augmentation of her liberty, the way in which she came 

 to follow him to the hunt, and finally to consent (at first 

 under protest) to bear the trophies of these joint expedi- 

 tions back to camp on her back, makes fascinating read- 

 ing, and Adams seems, naturally enough, to have valued 

 her affection. But the following year her nose was put 

 out of joint. During one of his hunts in the Yosemite 

 Valley, in the spring of 1854, he located the winter quar- 

 ters of a grizzly bear, from which the occupant had not 

 yet emerged, and deciding, from the sounds that reached 

 him in his careful reconnoitring, that the occupant was 

 a female with young, he determined to watch for her 

 appearance, kill her, and secure the cubs. The adventure 

 proved a thrilling one, and at its conclusion he found 

 himself in possession of a grizzly bear so small and help- 

 less that he only succeeded in raising it by inducing a 

 greyhound, that accompanied the party and had a 

 young family of her own at the time, to adopt it in lieu 

 of two out of her three offspring. She objected strenu- 

 ously at first, but soon gave in gracefully, and Ben Frank- 

 lin and his foster-brother grew up in amity, and continued 

 to be sworn allies through life. Ben, having never known 

 the world under any other guise, accepted it frankly as 

 he found it. He not only did not have to unlearn the 



