THE GRIZZLY BEAR. 207 



The fire lighted under the shelter of a rock, 

 around which the Indians assemble to spend their 

 evening, is not more bright and sparkling than the 

 wit and eloquence witli which these children of the 

 ■\\dlds describe their hunting adventures. "Whilst 

 you listen to them, the hours fly by, and the time 

 for repose arrives only too soon. Sometimes during 

 these animated recitals, an old sachem, who has 

 not spoken two words during the whole of the day, 

 begins to talk. At first he babbles like a woman, 

 but presently growing animated by his subject, he 

 grows eloquent upon the exploits which have ren- 

 dered his eventful life remarkable. But there is no 

 story among them all comparable to that which the 

 chief has to tell of his conflict with the grizzly 

 bear. The death of a foe slain in mortal combat 

 loses its interest, if it be told after that exciting 

 adventure. 



We Europeans, accustomed to more innocent 

 and more monotonous lands of sj^ort (the most 

 dangerous of which is hunting the wild boar), 

 can scarcely believe in these perilous encounters, 

 these adventures which make the heart beat strongly 

 in the bosom ; and in our scepticism we are usually 

 tempted to treat as falsehoods all that we hear of 

 the hunting stories of the backwoods. 



I have often listened in the tent of the Red 

 Skins to the stories of these men, who, living amid 

 the mighty solitudes and the primeval forests of the 



