558 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



to liim ; and, with his kind aid, and that of Charles D. Archibald, esq., of York Ter- 

 race, to whom I am also much indebted, the arrangements were soon made for my 

 collection in the Egyptian Hall, which I took on a lease for three years at a rent of 

 £550 per annum. 



My collection was soon in it, and preparing for its exhibition, while the grizzly 

 bears were still howling at the Euston Station, impatient for a more congenial place 

 for their future residence. It was quite impossible to give them any portion of the 

 premises I had contracted for in the Egyptian Hall, and the quarters ultimately pro- 

 cured for them being expensive, and the anxieties and responsibilities for them daily 

 increasing upon me, as they were growing stronger and more vicious iu their disposi- 

 tions, it was decided that they should be offered for sale, and disposed of as soon as 

 possible. For this purpose I addressed letters to the proprietors of zoological gardens 

 in Liverpool, in Dublin, and Edinburgh, and several other towns, and received in 

 reply from most of them the answer that they already had them in their gardens, 

 and that they were so complete a drug iu England that they were of little value. 

 One proprietor assured me that he had recently been obliged to shoot two that he 

 had in his gardens, in consequence of mischief they were doing to people visiting the 

 grounds, and to the animals in the gardens. 



My reply to several of these gentlemen was, that since the death of the famous old 

 grizzly bear, that had died a few months before in Regent's Park, it was quite certain 

 that there had not been one in the Kingdom until the arrival of these, " and that if 

 either of those gentlemen would produce me another living grizzly bear, at that time, 

 in the Kingdom, I would freely give him my pair." This seemed, however, to have 

 little weight with the proprietors of wild beasts ; but I at length disposed of them 

 for about the same p>rice that I had given for them four years before, when they were 

 not much larger than my foot (for the sum of £125) ; and they went to the Zoolog- 

 ical Gardens, Regent's Park. 



A word or two more of them and the reader will have done with the grizzlies, who 

 had been much obliged to me, no doubt, for four years' maintenance, and for a sight 

 of the beauties of the ocean and as much of the land of comforts and refinements as 

 they were allowed to see through the bars of their cage while they were traveling 

 from the rude wilds of the Rocky Mountains to the great metropolis, the seat and 

 center of civilization and refinement. As in their new abode they were allowed more 

 scope and better attendance, it was reasonable to suppose that their lives would have 

 been prolonged, and their comfort promoted ; but such did not prove to be the case. 

 From the continual crowds about them, to which they had the greatest repugnance, 

 they seemed daily to pine, until one of them died of exceeding disgust (unless abetter 

 cause can be assigned), and the other, with similar symptoms, added to loneliness, 

 perhaps, and despair, in a few months afterwards. 



Thus ended the career of the grizzly bears, and I really believe there were no tears 

 shed for them, unless they were tears of joy, for they seemed to extend their acquaint- 

 ance only to add to the list of their enemies, wherever they went. 



OPENING OF THE GALLERY AND MUSEUM. 



Mr. Catlin opened his gallery with a private view on the last three 

 days of January, 1840. 

 He thus describes its appearance: 



My business now and all my energies were concentrated at the Egyptian Hall, 

 where my collection was arranged upon the walls. The main hall was of immense 

 length, and contained upon its walls six hundred portraits and other paintings which 

 I had made during eight years' travels among forty-eight of the remotest and wildest 

 tribes of Indians in America, and also many thousands of articles of their manufact- 

 ure, consisting of costumes, weapons, &c, forming together a pictorial history of 

 those tribes which I had been ambitious to preserve as a record of them, to be per- 



