THE CANON AND ITS GRIZZLIES 161 



North Fork stage road, in the Sierras. Jim came 

 to CaUfornia a boy of eighteen and had his first 

 adventure with a grizzly that summer. He was 

 hunting in the high hills and ran across a big 

 grizzly, astride a rotten log, stripping the bark for 

 grubs. Jim was armed with a rifle and one of the 

 old-fashioned dragoon pistols that carried a half- 

 ounce ball. Following advice that had been 

 given to him, he first selected a handy cedar tree 

 with plenty of branches and took a shot at the 

 bear with his rifle. Without stopping to see its 

 effect, he dropped the rifle and started up the tree. 

 As he expressed it, he was twenty feet up before 

 his rifle hit the ground. However, nothing hap- 

 pened. The bear tumbled off the log and disap- 

 peared. After waiting until he felt safe, Jim 

 descended. He wore his black hair long, as was 

 common in those days, and most of it seemed to be 

 missing. Looking up, he found the whole cedar 

 tree decorated with his hair — a bunch here, a 

 bunch there, where he had left it on the way up. 



Here is another of Jim's stories: In 1850, they 

 were placer mining on Fine Gold Creek, a big 



