THE BEAR AND HIS MISFORTUNES. 
187 
liira of a fixed idea, incessantly drawn toward the woods by the 
magnet of liberty. If the bear of the Pyrenees or of Russia does 
not always sink under the corrosion of his sorrow, it is because the 
love of liberty is indestructible in his heart and cherishes hope 
there. But the polar bearj who cannot like his congenera, smell 
the earth and the breezes of his natal country, perishes of home- 
sickness and warm water within a few months. Conquered, per- 
secuted, without shelter, without estates, wandering from rock to 
rock, and less king than bandit, the bear, like Mithridates, has 
been forced long ago to accustom himself to eat all sorts of things, 
and to make himself a stomach proof against poisons. [So Mike 
Fink, that screamer among the half horse half alligator boys of 
the Western rivers, when the doctors told him he had lost the 
coat of his stomach by drinking raw New England rum, swallowed 
a buffalo-robe to make a new one for it.] 
Arsenic, although one of the most violent poisons to man, takes 
no hold on the bear. In the dose of half a pound it has no appa- 
rent effect ; a pound operates on the intestinal mucous membrane 
of the beast as a laxative. 
When the bear is urged by hunger to declare war upon ani- 
mals and on man, he hides himself among the lower branches of 
some tufted tree, or behind some mass of rock commanding a de- 
file, whence he brutally casts himself down upon the victim which 
he has been watching for, seizes by the neck and strangles. The 
muscular force of the bear is prodigious, and surpasses that of out- 
most vigorous athletes. Bears have been seen to stop and strike 
down with a single blow of their powerful claw a horse or a bull. 
If the bear rarely gets the better in his duels with man — as it ap- 
pears from the number of bear-skin hats with which the National 
Guard of France is adorned — this proceeds from the superiority of 
the arms of man, and also from the complete ignorance of the an- 
imal in the science of fencing. The bear being in the habit of 
rising on his hind legs to attack the hunter, naturally opens his 
side to the enemy, who only needs a little presence of mind and 
skill to rip open his belly with a knife, or to pierce his heart with 
a dagger or a bullet. The dagger or bowie-knife is the best to 
avoid injury of the skin. 
