XXIII 

 FACT VERSUS FICTION 



WHEN I first began actually to hunt the grizzly I 

 found that much of what I had read about him 

 and most of what I had heard was fiction. 



From childhood I had read every book that I could 

 lay hands on that treated of these bears, and later I had 

 listened (I dare say with open mouth and eyes) to those 

 I met who claimed to have had experience. I had come 

 to look upon the old-time hunters as heroes and demi- 

 gods, and was inclined to accept their successors, when 

 I ran across them, as teachers at whose feet I was glad to 

 sit and learn. When, therefore, my early experience 

 began to tumble my supposed knowledge about my ears, 

 I hastily said in my heart, Uke the Psalmist, that all men 

 were liars. 



But since then I have seen more both of men and of 

 bears, and have come to realize that if the men who have 

 written nonsense about grizzlies were technically liars, 

 most of them were quite unconscious of the fact; and 

 that if grizzlies are not altogether as they have been repre- 

 sented, they are sufficiently variable and individual in 

 their actions and habits to have, in most cases, supplied 



some nucleus of fact for the fictions to form on. 



256 



