A GREAT BEAR 191 



" He made a travaille and carried him by short stages 

 to the nearest trading-post, where the wounded man slowly 

 recovered, but was, of course, the. most mutilated-looking 

 being imaginable. Carriere, in telling the story, says that 

 he fully believes it to have been the Holy Virgin that lifted 

 him up and placed him in the fork of the tree, and thus 

 preserved his life. 



" The bear is stated to have been as large as a common 

 ox, and must have weighed, therefore, not far from fifteen 

 hundred pounds. Mr. Denig adds that he saw the man 

 about a year after the accident, and some of the wounds 

 were even then not healed. Carriere fully recovered,, 

 however, lived a few years, and was killed by the Blackfeet 

 near Fort Union." 



The exploring party were now in the country of the 

 Assiniboin Indians, the mighty Yellowstone River, of the 

 bighorns, and the Bad Lands, which looked like deserts of 

 tombs. 



They were in disappearing old America, and it is the 

 wonder of the world that the ancient conditions of life so 

 suddenly vanished, and that steam, electricity, and a demo- 

 cratic spirit should have changed this stupendous scene of 

 barbarism to a high civilization in a single century. 



It is the law of the world that nothing can long last 

 before that which is better, and never was there such an 

 illustration of the law of the survival of the fittest than old 

 America and new America on the Missouri, of which the 



