Hunting the Grisly. 313 



she caught him, almost biting a piece out of the calf of his 

 leg, pulled him down, bit and cuffed him two or three 

 times, and then went on her way. 



The only time Woody ever saw a man killed by a bear 

 was once when he had given a touch of variety to his 

 life by shipping on a New Bedford whaler which had 

 touched at one of the Puget Sound ports. The whaler 

 went up to a part of Alaska where bears were very plen- 

 tiful and bold. One day a couple of boats' crews landed ; 

 and the men, who were armed only with an occasional 

 harpoon or lance, scattered over the beach, one of them, 

 a Frenchman, wading into the water after shell-fish. Sud- 

 denly a bear emerged from some bushes and charged 

 among the astonished sailors, who scattered in every di- 

 rection ; but the bear, said Woody, "just had it in for 

 that Frenchman," and went straight at him. Shrieking 

 with terror he retreated up to his neck in the water ; but 

 the bear plunged in after him, caught him, and disem- 

 bowelled him. One of the Yankee mates then fired a 

 bomb lance into the bear's hips, and the savage beast 

 hobbled off into the dense cover of the low scrub, where 

 the enraged sailor folk were unable to get at it. 



The truth is that while the grisly generally avoids a 

 battle if possible, and often acts with great cowardice, it is 

 never safe to take liberties with him ; he usually fights 

 desperately and dies hard when wounded and cornered, 

 and exceptional individuals take the aggressive on small 

 provocation. 



During the years I lived on the frontier I came in con- 

 tact with many persons who had been severely mauled or 



