298 Old Rphraim. 



were men belonging to that hardy and adventurous 

 class of backwoodsmen which had filled the wild country 

 between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi. 

 These men carried but one weapon : the long-barrelled, 

 small-bored pea-rifle, whose bullets ran seventy to the 

 pound, the amount of powder and lead being a little less 

 than that contained in the cartridge of a thirty-two calibre 

 Winchester. In the Eastern States almost all the hunt- 

 ing was done in the woodland ; the shots were mostly 

 obtained at short distance, and deer and black bear were 

 the largest game ; moreover, the pea-rifles were marvel- 

 lously accurate for close range, and their owners were 

 famed the world over for their skill as marksmen. Thus 

 these rifles had so far proved plenty good enough for the 

 work they had to do, and indeed had done excellent service 

 as military weapons in the ferocious wars that the men of 

 the border carried on with their Indian neighbors, and 

 even in conflict with more civilized foes, as at the battles 

 of King's Mountain and New Orleans. But when the 

 restless frontiersmen pressed out over the Western plains, 

 they encountered in the grizzly a beast of far greater 

 bulk and more savage temper than any of those found 

 in the Eastern woods, and their small-bore rifles were 

 utterly inadequate weapons with which to cope with him. 

 It is small wonder that he was considered by them to be 

 almost invulnerable, and extraordinarily tenacious of life. 

 He would be a most unpleasant antagonist now to a man 

 armed only with a thirty-two calibre rifle, that carried but 

 a single shot and was loaded at the muzzle. A rifle, to 

 be of use in this sport, should carry a ball weighing from 



