THE BLACK BEAR. 



37 



the settlements except to dispose of his peltry 

 and hides in exchange for cartridges and 

 provisions, and he leads a life of such lonely 

 isolation as to insure his individual character- 

 istics developing into peculiarities. Most of 

 the wilder districts in the eastern States still 

 preserve memories of some such old hunter 

 who lived his long life alone, waging ceaseless 

 warfare on the vanishing game, whose oddities, 

 as well as his courage, hardihood, and wood- 

 craft, are laughingly remembered by the older 

 settlers, and who is usually best known as 

 having killed the last wolf or bear or cougar 

 ever seen in the locality. 



Generally the weapon mainly relied on by 

 these old hunters is the rifle ; and occasion- 

 ally some old hunter will be found even to this 

 day who uses a muzzle loader, such as Kit 

 Carson carried in the middle of the century. 

 There are exceptions to this rule of the rifle 

 however. In the years after the Civil War one 

 of the many noted hunters of southwest Virginia 

 and east Tennessee was Wilber Waters, some- 

 times called The Hunter of White Top. He 

 often killed black bear with a knife and dogs. 

 He spent all his life in hunting and was very 

 successful, killing the last gang of wolves to 

 be found in his neighborhood ; and he slew 

 innumerable bears, with no worse results to 

 himself than an occasional bite or scratch. 



In the southern States the planters living in 

 the wilder regions have always been in the 

 the habit of following the black bear with 

 horse and hound, many of them keeping regu- 



