His Fierceness 237 



and, of course, thought of all the bear stories I had ever 

 heard or read, I fully expected, as each bear passed me 

 by, that the next would be looking for just such an in- 

 nocent, unsuspecting idiot as I felt myself to be. But, 

 strange as it appeared to us next morning, none of us 

 had been molested; and, although one of the party de- 

 clared that a bear had stepped over the log near his head 

 (he had shrunk into his blanket awaiting in terror the at- 

 tack that never came), and the huge tracks were all 

 about us, the bears had simply, in passing down the creek 

 to their feeding grounds, run into and through our camp, 

 which we had foolishly pitched right in their path. 



But the bears did not return that way. And, although 

 we camped in this same place for two more nights, they 

 never used this trail again while we were there. The 

 horses, which were evidently alarmed by the smell of the 

 bears as they passed along, had broken their ropes, fled 

 out of harm's way, and then stopped and gone to grazing. 

 We found them only a short distance away and the bears 

 had paid no attention to them. 



Since then, in sleeping in the open near their feeding 

 grounds, I have often heard grizzlies in the night; and 

 have often had them "infest" more formal camps, coming 

 to steal and hunt for meat or other food. Indeed, as al- 

 ready told, I have had hard work at times to protect my 

 supplies from them. But although it has been mighty 

 seldom that I had a dog around, I have always enjoyed 

 the same immunity from attack as did my earliest prede- 

 cessors in grizzly-bear study. 



It is also quite evident from the journal of Lewis and 

 Clark that they unquestionably assumed, whenever a 



