351 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



always market for bear grease, and sometimes 

 you can sell the hams. They 're good as hog 

 hams any day. And you are your own boss in 

 my business, too, if the bears ain't too big and 

 too many for you. Old grizzlies I despise, — 

 they want cannon to kill 'em; but the blacks 

 and browns are beauties for grease, and when 

 once I get 'em just right, and draw a bead on 

 'em, I fetch 'em every time." Another said he 

 was going to catch up a lot of mustangs as 

 soon as the rains set in, hitch them to a gang- 

 plough, and go to farming on the San Joaquin 

 plains for wheat. But most preferred the shake 

 business, until something more profitable and as 

 sure could be found, with equal comfort and 

 independence. 



With a cheap mustang or mule to carry a pair 

 of blankets, a sack of flour, a few pounds of 

 coffee, and an axe, a frow, and a cross-cut saw, 

 the shake-maker ascends the mountains to the 

 pine belt where it is most accessible, usually 

 by some mine or mill road. Then he strikes off 

 into the virgin woods, where the sugar pine, king 

 of all the hundred species of pines in the world 

 in size and beauty, towers on the open sunny 

 slopes of the Sierra in the fullness of its glory. 

 Selecting a favorable spot for a cabin near a 

 meadow with a stream, he unpacks his animal 

 and stakes it out on the meadow. Then he 

 chops into one after another of the pines, until 



