FOREST LIFE. 101 



" Having annoyed them sufficiently to induce tliera to attempt 

 an egress from the passage below, the obstacles were removed, 

 after stationing two men, one on either side, with their axes +o 

 dispatch them — when the old bear thrust out her head. A se- 

 vere wound was inflicted, which sent her back growling and 

 gnashing her teeth. Again thrusting the pole through the upper 

 aperture, we punched and jibed her for some minutes before she 

 could be induced to make a second effort to escape ; when she 

 did, she was met as before, receiving a second and more deadly 

 wound, which was succeeded with less furious demonstrations of 

 rage than before. A third effort was made to drive them out, 

 but there was no response save the piteous crying of small cubs. 

 We then cut a small hard-wood tree, trimmed off' the branches, 

 leaving one prong about six inches long, sharpened out, forming 

 a hook. Enlarging the aperture below, we thrust in the wooden 

 hook, which grappled a heavy but resistless carcass. "With much 

 exertion we drew it forth : she was dead. The cubs, four in 

 number — a thing unusual by one half — we took alive, and carried 

 them to the camp, kept them a while, and finally sold them. 

 They were quite small and harmless, of a most beautiful lus- 

 trous black, and fat as porpoises. The old dam was uncommonly 

 large ; we judged she might weigh about three hundred pounds. 

 Her hide, when stretched out and nailed on to the end of the 

 camp, appeared quite equal to a cow's hide in dimensions." 



Here in our wild winter quarters, where we delight to dwell 

 during a period of from three to four months, we find much to 

 interest and amuse — much to do, for an equal amount of labor is 

 rarely performed within the same time under any other circum- 

 stances, and I may add, too, with less fatigue or disrelish. With 

 incident, romance, story-, song, and adventure, time passes rapidl} 

 away. 



