66 SPOR TIXC AD / 'EN Tl 'AY: .S 



guess we j lulled her to weigh over three hundred pounds. 

 AVe subsequently learned that she was accompanied by two 

 cubs, but that the dogs had treed them and they had been 

 killed before the mother was. Resuming 1 the maich, we wen; 

 kept busily at work nearly all day, now shooting at a deer, 

 next at a squirrel, a hare, a wild eat, a wolf, a grouse, or what- 

 ever else came in our way, for the forest was well stocked with 

 game. During the course of the afternoon I saw a bear and two 

 cubs, and fired at one of the latter and hit it in the shoulder ; 

 but the mother, instead of showing light, scampered away at 

 her best pace, and left her youngster to the tender mercies of 

 my friend, who finished it with a shot in the heart. 



Our guns were kept busy at intervals for several hours on both 

 fur and feather, but no plantigrade presented itself to receive 

 our compliments until near four o'clock, when we came in sight 

 of a burly male which was munching berries in a patch of buck- 

 thorn. We commenced stalking him by retreating as rapidly 

 as possible for three or four hundred yards, then crawling 

 carefully up from the leeward, so as not to give him our wind. 

 Alter groping about among wet shrubbery and dodging 

 behind trees for half an hour, we came to* within fifty yards of 

 our intended victim, and were getting ready to open lire on 

 him when a vine tripped me up, as I was trying to get 

 a little nearer, and sent me sprawling headlong into a mass of 

 apparently unfathomable briars that tore small lanes of blood 

 through my face. When T fell, the bushes caught my gun so 

 strongly that it was discharged within an inch of my nose, but I, 

 fortunately, escaped any greater injury than having my mouth 

 and eyes partially filled with fine grass, leaves, and particles 

 of clay that were scattered about by the shot. By the time I 

 had extricated myself from my thorny couch and picked out 

 enough of the stuff in my eyes to enable me to gaze around, 

 the bear and my companion had disappeared, and I was left to 

 my own emphatic thoughts and exasperated feelings. Not 

 knowing which way to move to find either quary or friend, I 

 started straight ahead, where I heard the dogs giving tongue, 

 and in the course of twenty minutes reached the bank of a stream 



