HUNTING IN AFRICA 21 
I have seen, myself, a bear, shot at from that foolish 
position, almost run over two good men, who in their hurry 
to get out of his way, missed him clean, and were them- 
selves in danger for a moment. 
I have also known of a soldier of the Fifth Infantry, 
an excellent shot, killed by a small bear in a plum thicket, 
into which he had the temerity to follow the beast, after 
wounding him with his Springfield rifle. 
I have seen a three-quarters grown grizzly charge savagely 
after being shot through the body, when he had been 
followed into a corner of the rocks, from which he could 
in no way retreat. 
But none of these instances, nor yet hundreds more 
like them, which anyone who had hunted successfully in 
our mountains for years could supply, invalidates my con- 
tentions; that whatever sort of an opponent the great gray 
bear may have been a hundred years ago, he is to-day, and 
he has been for many years, an exceedingly timid animal. 
He falls to the slightest wound. I have seen one fall, 
making a terrible outcry, and roll fully fifty yards down 
hill, to a shot that only slightly wounded one of his fore 
paws. When, still roaring, he rolled almost up against 
me, his sudden dismay was ludicrous. He gathered him- 
self up from the ground in an instant, and went off at a 
great pace till shot. My hunter, Frank Chatfield, who 
was with me in my annual hunt for many years, a splendid 
shot, had killed before his death, more than a hundred 
grizzlies. He told me he never knew a grizzly to charge 
home. Very rarely he would rush forward on receiving 
his wound (he did not probably see his enemy) and also 
very occasionally before “‘clearing,’ he would stand up 
straight and growl, giving any man with ordinary nerve, 
all the chance he wanted, to shoot him dead. But charge 
in, he never did. I have shot, in the old days, twenty-five, 
I never saw one charge. 
