Trail and Camp-Fire 



coloring facts too much with theory it may be 

 well to state the facts first. 



In the summer of 1886 I spent my college 

 vacation hunting with a Micmac Indian on 

 the headwaters of a New Brunswick river. I 

 had stalked and killed a lean old black bear 

 on one of the small mountains that bordered 

 the river near our camp, and so much of his 

 carcass as we had not carried off for our 

 larder, lay among the low blueberry bushes 

 near the summit. About a week later we 

 climbed up to it again, and found that it had 

 been partly devoured by another bear. It 

 was in August Blueberries were ripe and 

 marvelously plentiful. The new bear thus 

 could not have been driven to cannibalism by 

 those pangs of hunger by which some writers 

 have thought it necessary to explain such an 

 act 



It was about ten in the morning when we 

 reached the carcass. Nicholas, the Indian, 

 examined the carcass from above. I incau- 

 tiously walked once around and below it, 

 looking for the new bear's trail. We then re- 

 tired to another spur of the mountain, whence 

 at a distance of about 300 yards we could 



command the whole hillside on which the car- 



240 



