254 THE MINDS AND MANNERS 



Procuring from the bear dens, a pike pole with a stout spike 

 in the end, I received the next charge with a return thrust 

 meant to puncture both the boar's hide and his understanding. 

 He backed off and charged more furiously than ever, with white 

 foam flying from his jaws. 



He cared nothing for his punishment. He charged until 

 his snout bled freely, and the fence bulged at the strain. 



Then I became regularly scared! I feared that the savage 

 beast would break through the fence in spite of its strength, 

 and run amuck among those helpless children* I "beat it" 

 back to my office, hurried back with one of my loaded rifles, and 

 without losing a second put a bullet through that raging brain 

 and ended that danger forever. 



The Overrated Peccary. This reminds me that the col- 

 lared peccary has been credited with a degree of courage that 

 has been much exaggerated. While a hunted and cornered 

 peccary will fight dogs or men, and put up a savage and dan- 

 gerous defense, men whom I know in the peccary belt of Mexico 

 have assured me that a drove of peccaries will not attack a 

 hunter who has killed one of their mates, nor keep him up a 

 tree for hours while they swarm underneath him waiting for 

 his blood. I have been assured by competent witnesses that 

 in peccary hunting there is no danger whatever of mass attack 

 through a desire for revenge, and that peccaries fired at will 

 run like deer. 



A Black Bear Killed a Man for Food. There is on 

 record at least one well-authenticated case of a black bear 

 deliberately going out of his way to cross a river, attack a man 

 and kill him. 



On May 17, 1907, at a lumber camp of the Red Deer Lumber 

 Company, thirty miles south of Etiomami on the Canadian 

 Northern Railway, Northwest Territory, a cook named T. 

 Wilson was chased by a large black bear, without provocation, 

 struck once on the head, and instantiy killed. The bear then 

 picked him up, carried him a short distance, and proceeded 



