262 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



Caspar Whitney once told me an extraordinary 

 story which proves this. Some thirty years 

 ago, in the State of New Mexico, a prospector, 

 named Boyd, was so badly bitten by a grizzly 

 bear that he died a fortnight after the accident. 

 The two of them were out for meat, and the 

 bear charged suddenly out of covert. Boyd 

 shot it, as was afterwards discovered, clean 

 through the heart, but it rushed at him and 

 did terrible execution before Mr. Whitney 

 could put a bullet through its brain. Female 

 bears, with cubs to defend, are even more 

 dangerous than the wounded animals of either 

 sex, and I remember being told in the Cau- 

 casus that, only a year or two before, a she- 

 bear, who had been robbed of her cubs, had 

 killed two Russians, members of a scientific 

 expedition exploring that range. 



The buffalo and bison are also a source of 

 great danger, chiefly because of the cunning 

 with which, when wounded, they lie in am- 

 bush, circle round their pursuer, unseen by 

 him in the high grass, and suddenly, without 

 warning, dash out on him from a wholly un- 

 expected quarter. The Cape buffalo, indeed, 

 seems always to have regarded the vengeance 

 of the wild as its special mission. It was one 

 of these animals that tossed Selous and killed 

 his horse in 1874, and, some years later, Mr. 

 Thomson all but suffered the same fate in 



