CHAPTER I 
THE START OF THE TRAIL 
I sHouLD hesitate to tell — with the expectation 
that it would'be accepted as the truth — the true 
story that I am now to relate, were it not possible 
for me to illustrate it with photographs that I my- 
self have taken. 
It is a story of human kindness and compassion 
that has seldom, if ever, been exceeded, and of inci- 
dents, humorous, pathetic, and surprising, that had 
their beginning in a log-cabin far back in the for- 
est. Even to-day, many years after the first event, 
this train of strange incidents has not come to its 
end. The story chronicles the life of a black bear’s 
cub, which, having lost its mother when only a few 
days old, was saved from starvation by a kind- 
hearted woman, who adopted it into her family and, 
when its life was all but gone, nursed it and cared 
for it with her own baby. 
From time immemorial we have had handed 
down to us myths, legends, and stories connecting 
the lives of the lower animals with those of human 
beings. Ancient history gives us the story of 
Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, who, 
it is said, as infants, were left in the desert to 
starve. and were saved from that tragic end by a 
