112 The Grizzly Bear 



Every day during this time we had seen one or more 

 bear, and had tried all kinds of dodges to get a shot. We 

 cut trails from two directions through the brush to each 

 slide, so that whichever way the wind blew we could creep 

 up against it. We felled foot logs across the streams, and 

 as the high water took them out, we felled more. We ex- 

 hausted our strength and our ingenuity in ceaseless stalking 

 and planning, and our knowledge of the English language 

 in expressing our opinion of the country and the bears; 

 but the bears were shrewd, and not a bald face among them 

 offered to give us a scrap. And so five weeks after our 

 arrival, satisfied that whatever might be said of their cour- 

 age, the Selkirk bears were our superiors in cunning, we 

 tied up our tent door and walked twenty-two miles to the 

 settlements, intending to get horses and pack out our be- 

 longings. Arrived at the town, we called on an old pros- 

 pector who was said to have been up this stream, and who 

 had, if rumor spoke true, killed quite a number of griz- 

 zlies. Up to this time I had prided myself on being a 

 hunter, and was not a little crestfallen to think that we 

 had been unable to get so much as a shot at a bear. If, I 

 said to myself, this prospector had been able to get so 

 many, I should at least have been able to get one small one. 

 We asked him if he had, by clean hunting, ever killed a 

 bear up that creek. He said no, that he had not; he had 

 always baited them and then watched the bait. 



We therefore decided to go back and try the bait 

 scheme. We had thought of this before, but it seemed so 

 like taking unfair advantage of the animal that we had put 

 the thought aside. But now our sensibilities were some- 

 what blunted. We were bent on bear at any price, and we 



