AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
159 
ever, it threatens rain, a tent or wigwam of bark can soon 
be erected, perfectly weather tight. And in winter this 
may be rendered more comfortable by shoveling the snow 
up on the walls so as to exclude the wind. 
When a bear runs away with one of your pigs, there is 
no use in going after him, hallooing, without a gun. You 
may scare him away from the mutilated carcase, but it will 
make indifferentpork. But trace to where hehasdragged it, 
and near su nset let self and friend hide themselves within easy 
distance, and he will be certain to comeforhissupper, which, 
like all sensible animals, he prefers to any other meal. Nay, 
it is highly probable, if he possesses the gallantry which a 
well bred bear had ought to have, he will bring Mrs. 
Bruin and all the children along with him, and you can 
transact business with the whole family at once. 
In hunting the bear, take all the curs in the village 
along with you. Game dogs are useless for this purpose; 
for unless properly trained, they fly at the throat, and get 
torn to pieces or hugged to death for their pains. The 
curs yelp after him, bite his rump, and make him tree, 
where he can be shot. The bear of Canada is seldom dan- 
gerous. He is always ready to enter into a treaty, “ let be 
for let be” — but if wounded, he is dangerous in the ex- 
treme. You should always, therefore, hunt him in 
couples, and have a shot in reserve, or a goodly cud- 
gel, ready to apply to the root of his nose, where 
he is as invulnerable as Achilles was in the heel. Some 
ludicrous stories are told of bear hunting; for Bruin 
is rather a humorist in his way. A friend of mine with 
his surveying party, ten men in all, once treed a very 
large one; they immediately cut clubs, and set to work to 
fell the tree. Bruin seemed inclined to maintain his posi- 
tion, till the tree began to lean, when he slid down to 
about fifteen feet from the ground, and then clasped his 
fore paws over his head and let himself tumble amongst 
them. Every club was raised, but Bruin was on the alert; 
he made a charge upon the man immediately in front, and 
escaped with two or three thumps on the rump, which he 
valued not one pin. 
When once they have killed a pig, if you do not manage 
to kill the bear, you will never keep one hog; for they 
will come back till they have taken the last of them; — 
they will even invade the sacred precincts of the pig stye. 
An Irishman in the Newcastle district once caught a bear 
flagrante delicto , dragging a hog over the walls of a pew. 
Pat instead of assailing the bear, thought only of securing 
his property; so he jumped into the stye, and seized the 
pig by the tail. Bruin having hold of the ears, they had 
a dead pull for possession, till the whilli-looing of Pat, 
joined to the plaintive notes of his protege , brought a 
neighbour to his assistance, who decided the contest in 
Pat’s favour, by knocking the assailant on the head. A 
worthy friend of mine, of legal profession, and now high 
in office in the colony, once, when a young man, lost his 
way in the woods, and seeing a high stump, clambered up 
it with the hope of looking around him. While standing 
on the top of it for this purpose, his foot slipped, and he 
was precipitated into the hollow of the tree, beyond the 
power of extricating himself. While bemoaning there 
his hard fate, and seeing no prospect before him, save that 
of a lingering death by starvation, the light above his head 
was suddenly excluded, and his view of the sky, his only 
prospect, shut out by the intervention of a dense medium, 
and by and by he felt the hairy posteriors of a bear descend 
upon him. With the courage of despair he seized fast 
hold of Bruin behind, and by this means was dragged once 
into upper day. Nothing, surely, but the instinct of con- 
sanguinity could have induced Bruin thus to extricate his 
distressed brother. — St. Andrew’s Current. 
From the New England Galaxy. 
SOME PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF A 
SPORTSMAN. 
[Concluded from page 116.] 
Few birds are more generally known than the wild 
goose. In its migrations it traverses an immense extent 
of country; and it is common in the spring and fall of the 
year to see vast flocks of these birds passing continually 
over our heads. They sometimes fly so near the earth 
that hundreds of these winged armies are cut off by the 
guns of the villagers. On such occasions when the ap- 
proach of the wild geese is announced, it creates as much 
excitement as if a hostile force were marching upon the 
town, with drums beating and banners flying. At these 
times there is no desire of exemption from service, but 
each man with a hearty zeal that would avail much in cases 
of human evasion, seizes his gun, and blazes away like ven- 
geance. They alight along the borders of our sea-shore, 
or more commonly within our vast bays, where they are 
shot down by myriads. I remember a singular mode of 
carrying on the war against them on one occasion, prac- 
ticed in a certain place, (that shall be nameless,) in the 
state of Maine. A party of hardy old wild fowl shooters, 
impatient of cutting off the flocks in detail, with the com- 
mon gun, succeeded in dragging a six-pound field piece 
to the sea-shore, which they loaded with several pounds 
of swan shot and pistol bullets, and opened a battery upon 
the enemy. But they soon were satisfied that this novel 
