that you have a man who understands bears, and knows by
the character of the growl when the bear really means to charge out into
the open, and also that the man with the stick can readily get out of the
way, which he cannot do in the case of every cave. The native with a long
pole, or rather stick, usually commences with a quiet nervous sort of
poke, which awakes the bear out of his midday slumbers and causes him to
rush at the stick with a furious growl. But this is merely a
demonstration, and the experienced native does not expect a charge, though
I need hardly say that he is well prepared to get out of the way. Then the
native commences to poke away in a more pronounced style, and at the same
time excites himself by calling in question the purity of Bruin's mother,
his female relations, and even those of his remote ancestors, to all of
which the bear responds by growls and rushes at the stick. At last his
growls and rushes at the stick become fierce and menacing, and all of a
sudden the experienced Hindoo, who by some instinctive knowledge is able
to gauge the charging moment, drops the stick and scuttles out of the way,
and the bear dashes headlong from the cave to be killed, or to make good
his escape, as the case may be. Poking a bear out of a cave is rather a
severe trial of one's nervous system, and if anyone doubts that he has
only to try it for himself, as it will perhaps show the individual that we
seldom rightly estimate the amount of nerve which we often expect natives
to show. I think I was never more startled in my life than I was one day
when I put my ramrod (it was of course in the muzzle loading days) into
the very narrow mouth of a cave in which I thought there was little chance
of Bruin being at home. A she-bear however was within, and all the fiercer
as she had cubs, but luckily she did not charge out, and I need hardly say
that I promptly drew back. Sometimes a cave may be so deep and tortuous
that the bear cannot be got out with the aid of a pole, and to meet such
cases I had stink balls made, as bears have very fine olfactory nerves and
seem particularly to object to disagreeable smells. These balls were
composed of asafoetida, pig dung, and any other offensive ingredient
that suggested itself to me at the time, and made up into about the size
of a cricket ball and then dried in the sun. The ball was, when required
to drive a bear out of a cave, impaled on the end of a long pole and
surrounded by dr