GRIZZLY BEAR-HUNTING. 137 
who had strayed away from the scenes once necessary 
for his life, and who loved, like the worn-out soldier, to 
“ fight the battles over,” in which he was once engaged. 
It may be, and is the province of the sportsman to 
exaggerate—but the “ hunter,” surrounded by the mag- 
nificence and sublimity of an American forest, earning 
his bread by the hardy adventures of the chase, meets 
with too much reality to find room for coloring—too 
much of the sublime and terrible in the scenes with 
which he is associated to be boastful of himself. While 
apart from the favorable effects of civilization, he is also 
separated from its contaminations ; and boasting and 
exaggeration are settlement weaknesses, and not the 
products of the wild woods. 
The hunter, whether Indian or white, presents one 
of the most extraordinary exhibitions of the singular 
capacity of the human senses to be improved by cultiva- 
tion. We are accustomed to look with surprise upon 
the instincts of animals and insects. We wonder and 
admire the sagacity they display, for the purposes of 
self-preservation—both in attack and defence. The 
lion, the bear, the beaver, the bee, all betray a species 
of intelligence, that seems for their particular purposes 
superior to the wisdom of man; yet, on examination, 
+t will be found that this is not the case. For all his- 
tories of the human denizen of the forest show, that the 
Indian surpasses the brute in sagacity, while the white 
hunter excels both animal and savage. 
