TRUE OR UNTRUE J 



17 



heavens, I determined to build a bower house, and 

 place the remains of the fish at its upper end, so as 

 to familiarize the beasts with its presence, and fur- 

 ther enable them to complete their repast without 

 alarming their suspicious natures. Having^ com- 

 pleted these arrangements, I bid the spot adieu for 

 a season, fully resolved that I would return at an 

 early period with a bear trap. 



A bower house, it may be necessary to inform the 

 readers, is simply a tunnel of boughs of about ten 

 or twelve feet long, at the end of which the bait is 

 hung from a limb of a tree, sufficiently high as to 

 cause Bruin some exertion to reach it, while directly 

 underneath your trap is set in the ground, and 

 to complete its concealment, covered over with dead 

 leaves or the withered spines of the fir tree. The 

 trap must not be fastened to the ground, but to a 

 thick pole of timber, which the captive can drag, 

 otherwise it would gnaw off its foot to regain liberty. 

 A bear does not look a very knowing animal, but we 

 must not always judge from appearances, for these 

 animals have been frequently known to take the pole 

 in their mouths and thus carry it, so as to prevent it 

 retarding their passage through the thick brushwood. 



The North American Indians say that a bear will 

 not seize a man who is lying by a fire until it has 

 extinguished the latter, and the way the beast 

 accomplishes this purpose is certainly curious, to say 

 the least of it. Having thoroughly saturated its 

 coat with water at the nearest available place, it 

 returns to the hunter's or h iveller's camp, and 

 extinguishes the glowing embers by violently shaking 

 itself over them. I cannot say that I believe this 

 story about Bruin, but it is a remarkable coincidence 

 that the native hunters of Siberia assert the same 

 thing. 



Now both these people live so far apart, that they 

 can have no intercourse with each other, so there 



C 



