224 FIFTY YEARS A HUNTER AND TRAPPER. 



into a colony of large black hornets, and they did punish me ter- 

 ribly in three minutes' time. My feet were swollen so that I was 

 obliged to remove my shoes and my entire body was spotted as a 

 leopard with great purple blotches and the internal fever which 

 I had was most terrible. I thought that every breath that I drew 

 was my last. I was two miles from the wagon road and nine 

 or ten miles in the wilderness. No one knew where I was, nor 

 where the traps were set. 



I thought no more of the bear. I only thought of reaching 

 the wagon road. I began one of the worst battles of my life, but 

 after a struggle of three hours I got to the road more dead than 

 alive. But here fortune favored me for soon after a man by the 

 name of White (one of the county commissioners who had 

 been in the southern part of the county on business) came along. 

 He took me home where the doctor soon got me on my feet 

 again. 



I told my oldest brother where he would find the trap, so 

 he took a man and team and went early the next morning and got 

 the bear all right. It was four or five days before I felt able again 

 to go into the woods and look at the traps, but when I did, I found 

 a small bear, (a cub) dead and the skin nearly worthless. This was 

 45 years ago, but I am still working at the same old trade, in a 

 small way. 



At another time and previous to the time mentioned, I, with a 

 partner, was trapping on the headwaters of Pine Creek. We had 

 been in camp about a week, when one day we had been setting a line 

 of traps about three miles from camp. It was in November and 

 the weather was very disagreeable, yet we were hustling for we 

 knew that the snow would soon be on us, and then we wished to 

 ( put in all the time we could hunting deer. 



On the day in question Orlando (that was my partner's name) 

 long before noon was complaining of a bad headache, and said 

 that it seemed as though every bone in his body ached. I tried to 

 persuade him to go to camp but he insisted on setting more traps. 

 About three o'clock in the afternoon he was obliged to give up, 

 and said he would sit down where he was and wait until I could 

 go further up the stream and set a couple more traps. I said no, 



