ely be an overmatch for
one of them if fronted fairly in the open. An old hunter, whom I could
trust, told me that he had seen in the snow in early spring the place
where a bear had sprung at two moose, which were trotting together;
he missed his spring, and the moose got off, their strides after
they settled down into their pace being tremendous, and showing how
thoroughly they were frightened. Another time he saw a bear chase a
moose into a lake, where it waded out a little distance, and then
turned to bay, bidding defiance to his pursuer, the latter not daring to
approach in the water. I have been told--but cannot vouch for it--that
instances have been known where the bear, maddened by hunger, has gone
in on a moose thus standing at bay, only to be beaten down under the
water by the terrible fore-hoofs of the quarry, and to yield its life
in the contest. A lumberman told me that he once saw a moose, evidently
much startled, trot through a swamp, and immediately afterwards a
bear came up following the tracks. He almost ran into the man, and was
evidently not in a good temper, for he growled and blustered, and two or
three times made feints of charging, before he finally concluded to go
off.

Bears will occasionally visit hunters' or lumberman's camps, in the
absence of the owners, and play sad havoc with all that therein is,
devouring everything eatable, especially if sweet, and trampling into
a dirty mess whatever they do not eat. The black bear does not average
much more than a third the size of the grisly; but, like all its kind,
it varies greatly in weight. The largest I myself ever saw weighed was
in Maine, and tipped the scale at 346 pounds; but I have a perfectly
authentic record of one in Maine that weighed 397, and my friend, Dr.
Hart Merriam, tells me that he has seen several in the Adirondacks that
when killed weighed about 350.

I have myself shot but one or two black bears, and these were obtained
under circumstances of no special interest, as I merely stumbled on them
while after other game, and killed them before they had a chance either
to run or show fight.

CHAPTER III.--OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRISLY BEAR.

The king of the game beasts of temperate North America, because the most
dangerous to the hunter, is the grisly bear; known to the few remaining
old-time trappers of the Rockies and the Great Plains, sometimes as "Old
Ephraim" and sometimes as "Moccasin Joe"--the last in allusion to his
queer,