290 FRANK F0HB3T2R*S FIELD SPORTS. 
reaching the animal’s heart. With these fearful odds against 
-the hunter, the Bear approaches the candle, growing every 
moment more sensible of some uncommon intrusion ; he reaches 
the blaze, and either raises his paw to strike it, or lifts his nose 
to scent it, either of which will extinguish it, and leave the 
hunter and the Bear in total darkness. This dreadful moment 
is taken advantage of—the loud report of the rifle fills the cave 
with stunning noise, and as the light disappears, the ball, if suc¬ 
cessfully fired, penetrates the eye of the huge animal, the only 
place where it would find a passage to the brain ; and this not 
only gives the death-wound, but instantly paralyzes, that no 
temporary resistance may be made. On such chances, the 
American hunter perils his life, and often thoughtlessly courts 
the danger. t. b. T.” 
With this brilliant sketch, I dose my observations on the 
Bear in particular, and on Western hunting in general. I 
have written on this part of my subject with less confidence and 
more fear of erring,—in that with Western sports I have no 
practical acquaintance; and that I have in consequence been 
obliged to depend for my facts on what I have learned from 
conversation or correspondence with others, or from the pub¬ 
lished works of those who have seen the animals in their natu¬ 
ral state, and whose opinions, founded on the notice and expe¬ 
rience of years, are doubtless more correct than any I could 
have arrived at in the course of a transient tour through the re¬ 
gions of Elk and Bison—on the strength of the briefest of 
which every travelled cockney deems himself fully justified in 
discoursing learnedly anent all the wild sports of the West. 
I mention this, in order to deprecate any severity of censure 
on this portion of my work, should errors occur, though I trust 
there are none so flagrant as to merit such. With many of the 
animals, in a state of domestication, I am familiar, as I am with 
the weapons used in their destruction ; and I intimately know 
men who have killed all the animals I have recorded here, ex¬ 
cept, perhaps, the Antelope, the Rocky Mountain Goat, the 
