CHAPTER VII. 



THE BEAR AND THE BISON. 



EVERY sportsman who has been to America is asked whether 

 there are one, or two, or three species of black bear ; whether the 

 cinnamon is identical with the brown bear, and what difference 

 there is between the true grizzly and the silvertip ; whether the 

 former is really confined to California ; what the Roachback bear 

 is ; to what family the bald-faced bear belongs ; and, of course, 

 what the weight was of the biggest bear he killed. Now, to speak 

 authoritatively upon the subject of bears one should be very 

 thoroughly acquainted with the various localities in which members 

 of that family are to be found. This means, practically, that one 

 knows the whole of the continent. One should have roamed from 

 the Gulf of California to Slave Lake and Hudson Bay, from Cape 

 Prince of Wales, America's jumping-off place towards Asia, down 

 along the continental backbone to the Sierras of the south, 

 across the Staked Plains to the scorched mesas of Mexico, and 

 then up through the arid regions of Southern California. Upon 

 such a wide field of observation, I will at once admit, I cannot 

 draw, nor was my bag of some sixteen or seventeen bear in all 

 the years I was in America one to be in the least proud of. 

 Friends who made bear the special, object of their trips to the 

 West, accomplished very different results, one man killing, in a 

 less number of years, more than half a hundred in excess of my 

 small bag. 



Bear stories, as a rule, make me feel tired, for not only do they 

 remind me of the bad luck I had in getting myself in the way of 



