304 WOUNDS PERSSON. 



to find his corpse. But they had not proceeded more 

 than half a mile when, to their astonishment and dismay, 

 the beast suddenly rushed from out of a thick brake, and 

 charged them and this with such rapidity, that it was not 

 until he was on the very point of seizing one of the party, that 

 Olof Ersson, a youth of eighteen, who had never before seen 

 a bear, was enabled to send a ball into his eye. The hurt, 

 nevertheless, did not prevent the beast from casting Persson 

 to the ground, and wounding him in the head and in the right 

 arm. And it might have fared still worse for the poor man, 

 had not Ersson come to the rescue ; who, throwing aside the 

 discharged gun, with his axe dealt the bear so desperate 

 a blow on the head (so severe a one, indeed, that Persson, 

 whose skull he was gnawing, fancied he felt the fangs of the 

 beast to loosen) as to prostrate him on the body of his 

 victim. The bear, however, made an effort to rise, but at 

 the same moment two bullets, fired by others of the party, 

 pierced him to the heart. 



It was an old male ; in colour, black-grey, with the points 

 of the hair lighter. The skin, although shrivelled when 

 brought to the market at Gefle, measured upwards of eight 

 feet in length. 



All the wounded men finally recovered ; but the hurts of 

 more than one were of so serious a nature, that they would 

 probably suffer from them as long as they lived. 



