n8 THE LAND OF THE LION 



has been in the past, and still in the future, is likely to be 

 much overstated. 



When we tell our tales of adventure by flood and field, 

 if one has any gift of speech at all, the story is not likely 

 to lose in the telling. No one can question facts or measure 

 distances on the smoking-room floor. The length of 

 shots is apt to increase with the years. The aspect of 

 the charging heads to grow more, not less, formidable. 

 To say as much is but to confess to one of the limitations 

 of our common humanity. 



But apart from such perhaps excusable licence, multi- 

 tudes of stories told in good faith by the actors in them 

 are actually unreliable to the last degree, because these 

 gentlemen have not known, or cared to know, the habits 

 of the beasts in whose slaying they have won renown. 



Take our American grizzly bear, for instance. It 

 seems a point of honour, with everyone who has shot a 

 grizzly, be he Western ranchman or sportsman who spends 

 his occasional holiday in the Rockies, to help our one 

 savage (so-called) animal to live up to, or rather, die up 

 to, such a reputation that shall not lose by comparison 

 with the king of beasts himself. 



This is ridiculous. When Lewis and Clark first 

 saw and named our great gray bear, he had the country 

 pretty much to himself. His only opponent was the ill- 

 armed Indian, whose flint arrows could scarcely pierce 

 the bear's thick hide. The bear was no use to the Indian, 

 who naturally kept clear of him. Lewis and Clark, there- 

 fore, found him a formidable animal enough, especially 

 when compared with his smaller black cousin, who could 

 be killed with a well-wielded axe. The men accompany- 

 ing Lewis and Clark's expedition were armed with the 

 musket, a very inferior weapon, or the small bore rifle. 

 These were not likely to kill, at one shot, the fine beasts 

 which weighed eight hundred pounds or even more. 



