CHAPTER I 

 THE START OF THE TRAIL 



I SHOULD hesitate to tell with the expectation 

 that it would be accepted as the truth the true 

 story that I am now to relate, were it not possible 

 for me to illustrate it with photographs that I my- 

 self have taken. 



It is a story of human kindness and compassion 

 that has seldom, if ever, been exceeded, and of inci- 

 dents, humorous, pathetic, and surprising, that had 

 their beginning in a log-cabin far back in the for- 

 est. Even to-day, many years after the first event, 

 this train of strange incidents has not come to its 

 end. The story chronicles the life of a black bear's 

 cub, which, having lost its mother when only a few 

 days old, was saved from starvation by a kind- 

 hearted woman, who adopted it into her family and, 

 when its life was all but gone, nursed it and cared 

 for it with her own baby. 



From time immemorial we have had handed 

 down to us myths, legends, and stories connecting 

 the lives of the lower animals with those of human 

 beings. Ancient history gives us the story of 

 Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, who, 

 it is said, as infants, were left in the desert to 

 starve, and were saved from that tragic end by a 



