A WAR OF EXTERMINATION. 139 



Although existing chiefly on vegetable diet, it will 

 greedily avail itself, whenever opportunity offers, to 

 gorge on flesh ; and to so great an extent has it been 

 known to indulge in gluttony that, on discovery by the 

 hunter, he has been found alike incapable of defence 

 or escape. 



On the first settlement of Oregon and British 

 Columbia the farmers suffered such serious losses 

 among their valuable newly-imported herds of horned 

 cattle and sheep that a war of extermination was 

 declared against the red bears (as they are frequently 

 there called), which did not terminate in those neigh- 

 bourhoods till the race had there almost become extinct. 

 In the vicinity of the Carriboo gold mines they now 

 are occasionally to be found, and doubtless will fre- 

 quent that locality for many years to come, as the sur- 

 rounding country is very rugged, covered with dense 

 timber, and totally unfit for cultivation. 



Many and many are the stories I have heard related 

 by trappers and miners in reference to their adventures 

 with these savage animals ; but as one bear story is so 

 much like another I desist here, as my personal 

 knowledge of the species is limited, only adding that I 

 have heard it universally affirmed that the activity of 

 the cinnamon bear makes it a more dangerous foe 

 than even the much-dreaded grizzly. 



BLACK BEAR. 



NONE of the ferae naturae are better known in a state 

 of captivity than the black bear. What village school- 

 boy, however remote the hamlet in which he resides, 

 cannot remember poor Bruin being led round by some 



