Home > Authors Index > Frank R Stockton > Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy > This page
Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy, stories by Frank R Stockton |
||
A Few Words About Bears |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
If you should ever be going up a hill, and should meet such a procession as that on the opposite page, coming down, I would recommend you to get just as far to one side as you can possibly go. Bears, especially when there are so many of them together, are by no means pleasant companions in a walk. But it is likely that you might wander about the world for the rest of your lives, and never meet so many bears together as you see in the engraving. They are generally solitary animals, and unless you happened to fall in with a mother and her cubs, you would not be likely to see more than one at a time. In our own country, in the unsettled parts of many of the States, the black bear is still quite common; and I could tell you of places where, if you pushed carefully up mountain-paths and through lonely forests, you might come upon a fine black bear, sitting at the entrance of her cave, with two or three of her young ones playing about her. If it should so happen that the bear neither heard you, saw you, or smelt you, you might see this great beast fondling her young ones, and licking their fur as gently and tenderly as a cat with her kittens. If she perceived you at last, and you were at a distance, it is very probable that she and her young ones, if they were big enough, would all scramble out of sight in a very short time, for the black bears are very shy of man if circumstances will permit them to get away before he approaches too near to them. But if you are so near as to make the old bear-mother fearful for the safety of her children, you will find that she will face you in a minute, and if you are not well able to take care of yourself, you will wish you had never seen a bear. But, in the western part of our country, especially in the Rocky Mountain region, the grizzly bear is found, and he is a very different animal from his black relations. He is the most savage and formidable animal on this continent, and very seldom is it that he runs away from a man. He is glad enough to get a chance to fight one. He is so large and powerful that he is very difficult to kill, and the hunter who has slain a grizzly bear may well be proud of the exploit. Washington Irving tells of a hunter who accidentally fell into a deep hole, out in the prairies, and he tumbled right on top of a great grizzly bear! How the bear got down there is not stated, and I don't suppose the hunter stopped to inquire. A fight immediately commenced between these two involuntary companions, and after a long struggle, in which the man had an arm and leg broken, and was severely bitten and torn besides, he killed the bear. The hunter had a very hard time after that, but after passing through adventures of various kinds, he floated down the Mississippi on a log and was taken in at a fort. He recovered, but was maimed for life. I think it is probable that no other man ever killed a grizzly bear in single combat, and I also have my doubts about this one having done so. It is very likely that his victim was a black bear. Few men care to hunt the grizzly bear except on horseback, so that if they have to run away, they may have better legs than their own under them. The other great bear of this continent is the white or Polar bear, of which we have all heard so much. Up in the regions of ice and snow this bear lives just as comfortably as the tiger in the hot jungles of Asia, and while he is not quite so savage as the tiger, he is almost as hard to kill. But, in speaking of his disposition, I have no intention whatever to give him a character for amiability. In fact, he is very ferocious at times. He has often been known to attack parties of men, and when wounded can make a most soul-stirring defence. The Polar bear is a big fellow, with long white hair, and he lives on seals and fish, and almost anything he can pick up. Sometimes he takes a fancy to have a man or two for his supper, as the following story will prove. A ship, returning from Nova Zembla, anchored near an island in the Arctic Ocean, and two of the sailors went on land. They were standing on the shore, talking to each other, when one of them cried out, "Stop squeezing me!" The other one looked around, and there was a white bear, very large but very lean and scraggy, which had sneaked up behind the sailors, and now had clutched one of them, whom he very speedily killed and commenced to eat, while the other sailor ran away. The whole crew of the ship now landed, and came after the bear, endeavoring to drive him away from the body of their comrade; but as they approached him, he quietly looked at them for a minute, and then jumped right into the middle of the crowd, seized another man, and killed him. Upon this, the crew ran away as fast as they could, and scuttling into their boats, rowed away to the ship. There were three of these sailors, however, who were too brave to stay there and see a bear devouring the bodies of their friends, and they returned to the island. The bear did not move as they approached him, and they fired on him, without seeming to injure him in the least. At length one of them stepped up quite close to him, and put a ball into his head just above his eye. But even this did not kill him, although it is probable that it lessened his vigor, for he soon began to stagger, and the sailors, falling upon him with their swords, were able to put him to death, and to rescue the remains of their comrades. After these stories, I think that we will all agree that when we meet a procession of bears, be they black, white, or grizzly, we will be very wise to give them the right of way, and to endeavor to drive from our minds, as far as possible, such ideas of the animals as we may have derived from those individuals which we have seen in rural menageries, nimbly climbing poles, or sedately drinking soda-water. |
||