244 The Grizzly Bear 



description, already quoted in full, of the peaceful and 

 repeated visits to his camp by Lady Washington's lover. 

 This also is an isolated incident and no general deductions 

 should be made from it. But as the two occurrences 

 stand face to face and, so far as I am av?are, make up the 

 whole of the direct testimony in the case, we are scarcely 

 warranted in finding a verdict against the grizzly. 



As for myself, I have been in the wilds during the 

 mating season of these animals in many different years, and 

 in many different parts of their range, and I have not only 

 invariably found them as hard to locate and as difficult 

 to approach at this time as at any other, but in the few 

 instances when I have seen anything bearing on the point 

 under discussion, the evidence has borne against the as- 

 sumption of any added fierceness on their part. 



Adams speaks of the grizzly as terrible if wounded 

 or cornered, and, using as he did the ineffectual weapons 

 of the fifties, he had many hand-to-hand encounters with 

 them. Yet he tells of many that ran away, and of one 

 that even ran away from her cubs to get out of the way 

 of danger. I have myself known two that ran away 

 and left cubs to their fate, but this is the rare exception, 

 and most of them will fight for their young to the last 

 spark of life. As for the others, I have always found about 

 as much individuality among grizzHes as among people. 

 One, if wounded, will fight to the last gasp, and the next 

 will try with its last breath to crawl away. 



But I have never known of a single instance where 

 one of these bears turned out of his way, unprovoked, to 

 attack a human being. I have known several cases where 

 men have been wounded, and one instance where a man 



