A GREAT BEAR 189 



shorter by cutting off several turns; we overtook Bona- 

 venture about four miles from our encampment, and passed 

 him. We rode forty miles to the fort in a trifle over six 

 hours. We had traveled in all about one hundred and 

 twenty miles. Bonaventure arrived two hours after we did, 

 and the carts came in the evening." 



It is the story of an inexperienced hunter, but in this 

 way the buffaloes and elk and the great animals of the 

 Northwest disappeared, leaving only their white bones as 

 the tombstones of the monarchs of the soil. Civilization 

 was at war with the buffalo and all of the great animals 

 of the Bad Lands and the prairies that bordered the moun- 

 tains. 



A GREAT BEAR 



The forms of gigantic bears were seen among the dis- 

 appearing animals of this transition period of American life. 



People delighted in telling hunting stories on the slow 

 steamers and at the trading-posts. One of these stories finds 

 record in Audubon's Journal, told by one Mr. Denig: 



" In the year 1835 two men set out from a trading-post 

 at the head of the Cheyenne, and in the neighborhood of 

 the Black Hills, to trap beaver. Their names were Michel 

 Carriere and Bernard Le Brun. Carriere was a man about 

 seventy years old, and had passed most of his life in the 

 Indian country in this dangerous occupation of trapping. 



" One evening as they were setting their traps along 

 the banks of a stream tributary to the Cheyenne, some- 



