pointed
as near the lump as I could, and fired away. But the bear didn't come;
he only clomb up higher, and got out on a limb, which helped me to see
him better. I now loaded up again and fired, but this time he didn't
move at all. I commenced loading for a third fire, but the first thing
I knowed the bear was down among my dogs, and they were fighting all
around me. I had my big butcher in my belt, and I had a pair of
dressed buckskin breeches on. So I took out my knife, and stood,
determined, if he should get hold of me, to defend myself in the best
way I could. I stood there for some time, and could now and then see a
white dog I had, but the rest of them, and the bear, which were dark
coloured, I couldn't see at all, it was so miserable dark. They still
fought around me, and sometimes within three feet of me; but, at last,
the bear got down into one of the cracks that the earthquake had made
in the ground, about four feet deep, and I could tell the biting end
of him by the hollering of my dogs. So I took my gun and pushed the
muzzle of it about, till I thought I had it against the main part of
his body, and fired; but it happened to be only the fleshy part of his
foreleg. With this, I jumped out of the crack, and he and the dogs had
another hard fight around me, as before. At last, however, they forced
him back into the crack again, as he was when I had shot. . .

I made a lounge with my long knife, and fortunately stuck him right
through the heart; at which he just sank down, and I crawled out in a
hurry. In a little while my dogs all come out too, and seemed
satisfied, which was the way they always had of telling me that they
had finished him. . . . . . . .

We prepared for resting that night, and I can a-sure the reader I was
in need of it. We had laid down by our fire, and about ten o'clock
there came a most terrible earthquake, which shook the earth so, that
we were rocked about like we had been in a cradle. We were very much
alarmed; for though we were accustomed to feel earthquakes, we were
now right in the region which had been torn to pieces by them in 1812,
and we thought it might take a notion and swallow us up, like the big
fish did Jonah.

In the morning we packed up and moved to the harricane, where we made
another camp, and turned out that evening and killed a very large
bear, which made _eight_ we had now killed in this hunt.

The next morning we entered the harricane again, and in little or no