d he sniffed in the low copses and thick bush-tangles he passed.

He came to a small green spot covered with kinnikinic, a ground plant two
inches high which bore red berries as big as a small pea. They were not red
now, but green; bitter as gall, and contained an astringent tonic called
uvaursi. Thor ate them.

After that he found soap berries growing on bushes that looked very much
like currant bushes. The fruit was already larger than currants, and
turning pink. Indians ate these berries when they had fever, and Thor
gathered half a pint before he went on. They, too, were bitter.

He nosed the trees, and found at last what he wanted. It was a jackpine,
and at several places within his reach the fresh pitch was oozing. A bear
seldom passes a bleeding jackpine. It is his chief tonic, and Thor licked
the fresh pitch with his tongue. In this way he absorbed not only
turpentine, but also, in a roundabout sort of way, a whole pharmacopoeia of
medicines made from this particular element.

By the time he arrived at the end of the gorge Thor's stomach was a fairly
well-stocked drug emporium. Among other things he had eaten perhaps half a
quart of spruce and balsam needles. When a dog is sick he eats grass; when
a bear is sick he eats pine or balsam needles if he can get them. Also he
pads his stomach and intestines with them in the last hour before denning
himself away for the winter.

The sun was not yet up when Thor came to the end of the gorge, and stood
for a few moments at the mouth of a low cave that reached back into the
wall of the mountain. How far his memory went back it would be impossible
to say; but in the whole world, as he knew it, this cave was home. It was
not more than four feet high, and twice as wide, but it was many times as
deep and was carpeted with a soft white floor of sand. In some past age a
little stream had trickled out of this cavern, and the far end of it made a
comfortable bedroom for a sleeping bear when the temperature was fifty
degrees below zero.

Ten years before Thor's mother had gone in there to sleep through the
winter, and when she waddled out to get her first glimpse of spring three
little cubs waddled with her. Thor was one of them. He was still half
blind, for it is five weeks after a grizzly cub is born before he can see;
and there was not much hair on his body, for a grizzly cub is born as naked
as a human baby. His eyes open and his hair begins to grow at just about
the same