YeDowfitone Park Protection Act 



By this time it was fast becoming dark and we returned 

 to the hotel. I should have said that we measured the 

 distance from the nearest point from the black bear to 

 where we stood, and found it to be exactly twenty-one 

 feet. The other bears were but a few yards further. 



When we returned to the house we entertained our 

 friends with an account of what we had seen, and had 

 there not been many eye-witnesses we probably would 

 have been entirely disbelieved.* As we were narrating 

 our story a man came into the room and said, "If you 

 want some fun, come outside; we have a bear up a tree." 

 We went outside of the hotel, and not over forty feet 

 from it found a black bear in a pine tree. It seems that 

 the wagon, already mentioned, had been stopped at the 

 pine tree and the horses had been taken out. The 

 owner, returning to his wagon, found the bear in it, and 

 this was the explanation why the bear had so suddenly 

 taken to the tree. 



The animal was considerably smaller than the one we 

 had seen earlier ; in fact, it was not more than half as 

 large, but still full grown. Quite a number of packers 

 and teamsters stood about, amusing themselves by mak- 

 ing the bear climb higher, till at last one of them asked 

 our driver, Jim McMasters, why he did not climb the 



* Colonel John Hay, of Washington, was one of the spectators 

 of this curious scene. Captain Albrecht Heese, of the German 

 Embassy, tells us that in July, 1895, while stopping at the Lake 

 Hotel, he saw a very large bear eating out of a trough in the daytime 

 while a number of tourists were present ; and that the bear was 

 finally chased away from the trough by a cow. At the Upper Geyser 

 Basin a bear was domiciled in the hotel ; it took food from the hands 

 of the hotel keeper, following him around like a dog. 



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