270 The Wilderness Hunter. 



The grisly is now chiefly a beast of the high hills and 

 heavy timber ; but this is merely because he has learned 

 that he must rely on cover to guard him from man, and 

 has forsaken the open ground accordingly. In old days, 

 and in one or two very out-of-the-way places almost to the 

 present time, he wandered at will over the plains. It is only 

 the wariness born of fear which nowadays causes him to 

 cling to the thick brush of the large river-bottoms through- 

 out the plains country. When there were no rifle-bearing 

 hunters in the land, to harass him and make him afraid, 

 he roved hither and thither at will, in burly self-confidence. 

 Then he cared little for cover, unless as a weather-break, 

 or because it happened to contain food he liked. If the 

 humor seized him he would roam for days over the rolling 

 or broken prairie, searching for roots, digging up gophers, 

 or perhaps following the great buffalo herds either to prey 

 on some unwary straggler which he was able to catch at 

 a disadvantage in a washout, or else to feast on the car- 

 casses of those which died by accident. Old hunters, 

 survivors of the long-vanished ages when the vast herds 

 thronged the high plains and were followed by the wild 

 red tribes, and by bands of whites who were scarcely less 

 savage, have told me that they often met bears under 

 such circumstances ; and these bears were accustomed to 

 sleep in a patch of rank sage bush, in the niche of a wash- 

 out, or under the lee of a boulder, seeking their food abroad 

 even in full daylight. The bears of the Upper Missouri 

 basin which were so light in color that the early explorers 

 often alluded to them as gray or even as "white " were 

 particularly given to this life in the open. To this day 



