more often met them singly or in pairs. He was only once attacked, and there
by a female, for the purpose of allowing her cubs time to escape. His gun on
this occasion missed fire, but he kept her at bay with the stock of it, until some>
gentlemen of the Hudson’s Bay Company, with whom he was travelling at the'
time, came up and drove her off. In the latter end of June 1826, he observed a
male caressing a female, and soon afterwards they both came towards him, but
whether accidentally, or for the purpose of attacking him, he was uncertain. He
ascended a tree, and as the female drew near, fired at and mortally wounded her.
She uttered a few loud screams, which threw the male into a furious rage, and he
reared up against the trunk of the tree in which Mr. Drummond was seated, but
never attempted to ascend it. The female, in the meanwhile retiring to a short
distance, lay down, and as the male was proceeding to join her, Mr. Drummond
shot him also. From the size of their teeth and claws, he judged them to be'
about four years old. The cubs of the Grisly Bear can climb trees, but where
the animal is fully grown it is unable to do so, as the Indians report, from
the form of its claws. Two instances are related by Lewis and Clark, and I havé
heard of several others, where a hunter having sought shelter in a tree from the
pursuit of a Grisly Bear, has been held a close prisoner for many hours, by the
infuriated animal keeping watch below. The Black and Brown or even the Polar
Bear ascend trees with facility. Some interesting anecdotes of contests with this
Bear, selected from the narratives of Lewis and Clark, Major Long, and others;
are related in Godman s Natural History, to which the reader is referred.
The Grisly Bears are carnivorous, but occasionally eat vegetables, and are observed
to be particularly fond of the roots of some species of psoralea and hedysarum.
They also eat the fruits of various shrubs, such as the bird-cherry, choke-cherry;
and hippophde Canadensis. The berries of the latter produce a powerful cathartic
effect upon them. Few of the natives, even of the tribes, who are fond of the flesh
of the Black Bear, will eat of the Grisly Bear, unless when pressed by hunger.
Say and Gass mention a method which the Shoshonee or Snake Indians have of
baking Bear’s flesh in a pit filled with alternate layers of brush-wood and meaty
and covered with earth *, which is nearly similar to the way in which the natives
of the South-sea Islands prepare their dogs and hogs.
The Grisly Bear inhabits the Rocky Mountains and the plains lying to the eastward
of them, as far as latitude 61°, and perhaps still farther north. Its southern
range, according to Lieutenant Pike, extends to Mexico. There is a Brown
* Gass’s J o u rn a l, fyc., p. 311.