126 THE TOWER MENAGERIE. 
the most striking peculiarities of this animal is his ex- 
treme tenacity of life. For the instances of this we are 
indebted almost wholly to the narrative of the Travels of 
Captains Lewis and Clarke, whose statements are no 
doubt founded in truth, although it may be suspected 
that they require to be received with some grains at 
least of allowance. According to these gentlemen one 
bear which had received five shots in his lungs, and five 
other wounds in various parts of his body, swam a con- 
siderable distance to a sand bank in the river, and 
survived more than twenty minutes; another that had 
been shot through the centre of the lungs, pursued at 
full speed the man by whom the wound was inflicted 
for half a mile, then returned more than twice that 
distance, dug himself a bed two feet deep and five feet 
long, and was perfectly alive two hours after he received 
the wound; and a third, although actually shot through 
the heart, ran at his usual pace nearly a quarter of a 
mile before he fell. ‘There is no chance, they add, of 
killing him by a single shot, unless the ball goes directly 
through the brain; a single hunter runs consequently 
no little risk in venturing to attack an animal upon 
whom the most dangerous wounds, if not instantaneously 
fatal, produce no obvious immediate effects. 
Notwithstanding the horror with which the natives 
regard this animal, it is said that they sometimes suc- 
ceed in rendering him tame; and a whimsical story is 
told by the late Governor Clinton, on the authority of 
an Indian trader, of an insult offered to a domesticated 
bear of this species by an Indian of a different tribe 
from that to which the master of the bear belonged, 
being regarded as a national affront, and producing a 
