near my own ranch. The man walked almost over a bear
while crossing a little point of brush, in a bend of the river, and was
brained with a single blow of the paw. In another instance which came
to my knowledge the man escaped with a shaking up, and without even a
fight. His name was Perkins, and he was out gathering huckleberries in
the woods on a mountain side near Pend'Oreille Lake. Suddenly he was
sent flying head over heels, by a blow which completely knocked the
breath out of his body; and so instantaneous was the whole affair that
all he could ever recollect about it was getting a vague glimpse of the
bear just as he was bowled over. When he came to he found himself lying
some distance down the hill-side, much shaken, and without his berry
pail, which had rolled a hundred yards below him, but not otherwise the
worse for his misadventure; while the footprints showed that the bear,
after delivering the single hurried stoke at the unwitting disturber of
its day-dreams, had run off up-hill as fast as it was able.

A she-bear with cubs is a proverbially dangerous beast; yet even under
such conditions different grislies act in directly opposite ways. Some
she-grislies, when their cubs are young, but are able to follow them
about, seem always worked up to the highest pitch of anxious and jealous
rage, so that they are likely to attack unprovoked any intruder or even
passer-by. Others when threatened by the hunter leave their cubs to
their fate without a visible qualm of any kind, and seem to think only
of their own safety.

In 1882 Mr. Casper W. Whitney, now of New York, met with a very singular
adventure with a she-bear and cub. He was in Harvard when I was, but
left it and, like a good many other Harvard men of that time, took to
cow-punching in the West. He went on a ranch in Rio Arriba County, New
Mexico, and was a keen hunter, especially fond of the chase of cougar,
bear, and elk. One day while riding a stony mountain trail he saw a
grisly cub watching him from the chaparral above, and he dismounted to
try to capture it; his rifle was a 40-90 Sharp's. Just as he neared the
cub, he heard a growl and caught a glimpse of the old she, and he at
once turned up-hill, and stood under some tall, quaking aspens. From
this spot he fired at and wounded the she, then seventy yards off; and
she charged furiously. He hit her again, but as she kept coming like a
thunderbolt he climbed hastily up the aspen, dragging his gun with