904 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



305 



iur children's children. Eastern peo- 

 >le, and especially eastern sportsmen, 

 iced to keep steadily in mind the fact 

 hat the westerners who live in the 

 icighborhood of the forest preserves are " 

 he men who, in the last resort, will 

 letermine whether or not these preserves 

 .re to be permanent. They can not in 

 he long run be kept as forest and game 

 eservations unless the settlers round- 

 .bout believe in them and heartily sup- 

 >ort them , and the rights of these settlers 

 tiust be carefully safeguarded, and they 

 nust be shown that the movement is 

 eally in their interest. The eastern 

 portsman who fails to recognize these 

 acts can do little but harm by advocacy 

 >f forest reserves. 



It was in the interior of the park, at 

 he hotels beside the lake, the falls, and 

 he various geyser basins that we would 

 lave seen the bears had the season been 

 ate enough, but unfortunately the bears 

 vere still for the most part hibernating. 

 tVe saw two or three tracks, and found 

 me place where a bear had been feeding 

 >n a dead elk, but the animals them- 

 elves had not yet begun to come about 

 he hotels. Nor were the hotels open. 

 ^o visitors had previously entered the 

 >ark in the winter or early spring, the 

 icouts and other employes being the 

 >nly ones \vho occasionally traversed it. 

 ! was sorry not to see the bears, for the 

 :ffect of protection upon bear life in the 

 Yellowstone has been one of the phe- 

 lomena of natural history. Not only 

 lave they grown to realize that they are 

 ;afe, but, being natural scavengers and 

 'oul-feeders, the} 7 have come to recog- 

 lize the garbage heaps of the hotels as 

 ;heir special sources of food supply. 

 Fhroughout the summer months they 

 :ome to all the hotels in numbers, usu- 

 illy appearing in the late afternoon or 

 evening, and Ih&y have become as in- 

 lifferent to the presence of men as the 

 leer themselves some of them very 

 nuch more indifferent. They have now 

 :aken their place among the recognized 

 sights of the park, and the tourists are 

 learly as much interested in them as in 

 :he geysers. 



It was amusing to read the proclama- 

 ;ions addressed to the tourists by the 

 Dark management, in which they were 



solemnly warned that the bears were 

 really wild animals, and that they must 

 on no account be either fed or teased. 

 It is curious to think that the descend- 

 ants of the great grizzlies, which were 

 the dread of the early explorers and 

 hunters, should now be semi-domesti- 

 cated creatures, boldly hanging around 

 crowded hotels for the sake of what they 

 can pick up, and quite harmless so long 

 as any reasonable precaution is exer- 

 cised. They are much safer, for in- 

 stance, than any ordinary bull or stal- 

 lion, or even ram, and in fact there is 

 no danger from them at all unless the3^ 

 are encouraged to grow too familiar or 

 are in some way molested. Of course 

 among the thousands of tourists there 

 is a percentage of thoughtless and fool- 

 ish people, and when such people go out 

 in the afternoon to look at the bears feed- 

 ing they occasionally bring themselves 

 into jeopardy by some senseless act. The 

 black bears and the cubs of the bigger 

 bears can readily be driven up trees, and 

 some of the tourists occasionally do this. 

 Most of the animals never think of re- 

 senting it ; but now and then one is run 

 across which has its feelings ruffled by 

 the performance. In the summer of 

 1902 the result proved disastrous to a 

 too inquisitive tourist. He was travel- 

 ing with his wife, and at one of the 

 hotels they went out toward the garbage 

 pile to see the bears feeding. The only 

 bear in sight was a large she, which, as 

 it turned out, was in a bad temper be- 

 cause another party of tourists a few- 

 minutes before had been chasing her 

 cubs up a tree. The man left his wife 

 and walked toward the bear to see how 

 close he could get. When he was some 

 distance off she charged him, whereupon 

 he bolted back towards his wife. The 

 bear overtook him, knocked him down 

 and bit him severely. But the man's 

 wife, without hesitation, attacked the 

 bear with that thoroughly feminine wea- 

 pon, an umbrella, and frightened her 

 off. The man spent several weeks in 

 the park hospital before he recovered. 

 Perhaps the following telegram sent by 

 the manager of the Lake Hotel to Major 

 Pitcher illustrates with sufficient clear- 

 ness the mutual relations of the bears, 

 the tourists, and the guardians of the 



