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.
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