(_From a Backwoodsman’s Sketches._[6])
[6] Published by Murray, Albemarle Street. (_To a Correspondent,
J.F., Lambeth Terrace._)
When a bear runs away with one of your pigs, there is no use in going
after him, hallooing, without a gun. You may scare him away from the
mutilated carcass, but it will make but indifferent pork; since not
being bred in Leadenhall or Whitechapel, he has but a slovenly way of
slaughtering. But trace to where he has dragged it, and near sunset let
self and friend hide themselves within easy distance, and he will be
certain to come for his supper, which, like all sensible animals, he
prefers to every other meal. Nay, it is highly probable, if he possesses
the gallantry which a well-bred bear ought to have, he will bring Mrs.
Bruin and all the children along with him, and you can transact business
with the whole family at once. In hunting the bear, take all the curs in
the village along with you. Game dogs are useless for this purpose; for,
unless properly trained, they fly at the throat, and get torn to pieces
or hugged to death for their pains. The curs yelp after him, bite his
rump, and make him tree, where he can be shot. The bear of Canada is
seldom dangerous. He is always ready to enter into a treaty, similar to
what my Lord Brougham negotiated lately with Lord Londonderry, viz.
let-be for let-be--but if wounded, he is dangerous in the extreme. You
should always, therefore, hunt him in couples, and have a shot in
reserve, or a goodly cudgel, ready to apply to the root of his nose,
where he is as vulnerable as Achilles was in the heel. Some ludicrous
stories are told of bear-hunting; for Bruin is rather a humorist in his
way. A friend of mine, with his surveying party, ten men in all, once
treed a very large one; they immediately cut clubs, and set to work to
fell the tree. Bruin seemed inclined to maintain his position, till the
tree began to lean, when he slid down to about fifteen feet from the
ground, and then clasped his fore-paws over his head and let himself
tumble amongst them. Every club was raised, but Bruin was on the alert;
he made a charge, upset the man immediately in front, and escaped with
two or three thumps on the rump, which he valued not one pin. When once
they have killed a pig, if you do not manage to kill the bear, you will
never keep one hog; for they will come back till they have taken the
last of them;--they will even invade the sacred precincts of the
hog-sty. An Irishman in the Newcastle district once caught a bear
_flagrante delicto_, dragging a hog over the walls of the pew. Pat,
instead of assailing the bear, thought only of securing his property; so
he jumped into the sty, and seized the pig by the tail. Bruin having
hold of the ears, they had a dead pull for possession, till the
whillilooing of Pat, joined to the plaintive notes of his _protegé_,
brought a neighbour to his assistance, who decided the contest in Pat’s
favour by knocking the assailant on the head.--A worthy friend of mine,
of the legal profession, and now high in office in the colony, once,
when a young man, lost his way in the woods, and seeing a high stump,
clambered up it with the hope of looking around him. While standing on
the top of it for this purpose, his foot slipped, and he was
precipitated into the hollow of the tree, beyond the power of
extricating himself. Whilst bemoaning here his hard fate, and seeing no
prospect before him, save that of a lingering death by starvation, the
light above his head was suddenly excluded, and his view of the sky, his
only prospect, shut out by the intervention of a dense medium, and by
and by he felt the hairy posteriors of a bear descend upon him. With the
courage of despair he seized fast hold of Bruin behind, and by this
means was dragged once more into upper day. Nothing, surely, but the
instinct of consanguinity could have induced Bruin thus to extricate his
distressed brother.
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