A BEAR IN DIFFICULTY. 203 



swamps," replied Mike; "and he's a fat one; see, bis hind-toe 

 marks don't touch his front ones. If he 'd been a real lean one, 

 they 'd a well-nigh overlapped." 



The marks we saw soon led us to the edge of the bushes, and 

 then out on the open sands. We followed carefully until a roll of 

 sand affording a cover we crawled up behind it, and carefully con- 

 cealing our heads behind bunches of grass that grew scattered 

 about the summit, beheld our game in the undisturbed pursuit of 

 his morning avocations. The surf was rolling in, and there were 

 many things lying about on the sands that had been stranded 

 by a recent storm : here a tortoise-shell, and there a cocoa-nut, and 

 farther on a board, and some fragments of a vessel. Bruin was 

 busy inspecting these flotsam that had drifted into his domain. 

 He would first look at the article, then smell it, then touch it 

 with his fore-paw, and then he would deliberately seat himself 

 in the sand on his broad posteriors, with his hind-legs projecting 

 in front, and his toes turned up, and, lifting the article under con- 

 sideration to his mouth, turn his head on one side, and try to crack 

 it with his teeth. The indescribable air of burlesque gravity with 

 which this was done was laughable. Added to the individual 

 awkwardness of the animal was the fact of our unsuspected obser- 

 vation, and the scene appeared doubly ridiculous ; and when the 

 negroes chuckled aloud, the bear would only discontinue his 

 investigations for a moment to take a survey, and then renew them 

 again. The cocoa-nut he found too hard to bite, and so, after rolling 

 it over two or three times, threw it into the sea again. Then he 

 examined a large tortoise-shell, and putting his claws in the side, 

 with his arms a-kimbo, pryed it open, to find it empty. Next he 

 picked up an orange, and sitting down as before, ate it with evident 

 satisfaction, his fore-paws resting during the time of his mastication 

 on the toes of his hind-paws. Occasionally he would reach around 

 and scratch himself in the same manner as a negro, whom he 

 laughably resembled in very many of his manners. 



Presently he discovered a small cask, and after applying his 

 nose to the bunghole to scent the character of its contents set to 

 work to arrive at the interior. But the half-barrel was strongly 

 coopered, and in spite of bites, and boxes, and hugs without num- 



