Lake Umbagog.
reaches of the Cambridge River.
  There were only a very few Deer in the neighboring
forests when I first visited Upton in 1871 but they
became numerous by 1885 and very abundant some
ten years later. Since then their numbers have fluctuated
somewhat from season to season although they have continued
to be plentiful enough to supply the local hunters and
the visiting sportsmen with abundance of venison, sometimes
it is to be feared, at seasons when its possession is
not sanctioned by law.
  Bears have held their own fairly well ever since the
first settlement of the country, despite incessant persecutions
stimulated by the ever increasing value of their richly furred
pelts and by the state bounty offered for their destruction.
It is said that in the earlier days they would
not always give place to man when encountered in narrow
forest paths and I can remember when they often appeared
boldly by day in the hill pastures about Upton to prey
upon sheep. Although they have not as yet wholly ceased
the latter practise they have become, as a rule, among the
most timid and retiring of all the larger mammals.
Even the she-Bear with cubs will no longer face the
hunter but, on the contrary, will desert her offspring on the
first alarm to seek her own safety in precipitous flight.
Indeed a bull Moose or wounded buck Deer is more
to be feared at the present time than is the average
Black Bear.
   Not long after the Louparvier disappeared from the
Umbagog forests (and from those of the greater part of
Nothern New England as well) its place was taken by
the Bay Lynx an animal hitherto unknown, it