GRIZZLY-BEAR-CATCHING IN THE MOUNTAINS--NED AND TOM DINE IN THE MIDST OF
ROMANTIC SCENERY, AND HOLD SAGACIOUS CONVERSE--THE STRANGE DEVICES OF
WOODPECKERS.
Just as day began to peep on the following morning, the camp was roused
by one of the bear-catchers, a Mexican, who had been away to visit the
bear-trap during the night, and now came rushing in among the sleepers,
shouting--
"Hoor-roo! boy, him cotch, him cotch! big as twinty mans! fact!"
At first Ned thought the camp was attacked by savages, and he and Tom
sprang to their feet and grasped their rifles, while they sought to rub
their eyes open hastily. A glance at the other members of the camp,
however, shewed that they were unnecessarily alarmed. Croft leisurely
stretched his limbs, and then gathered himself slowly into a sitting
posture, while the others arose with various degrees of reluctance.
"Bin long in?" inquired Croft.
"No, jist cotched," answered the Mexican, who sat down, lit his pipe,
and smoked violently, to relieve his impatient feelings.
"Big 'un?" inquired Croft, again.
To this the Mexican answered by rolling his eyes and exclaiming "Hoh!"
with a degree of vigour that left his hearers to imagine anything they
pleased, and then settle it in their minds that the thing so imagined
was out of all sight short of the mark.
The excitement of the man at last fully roused the sleepy crew, and
Croft sprang up with the agility of a cat.
"Ho! boys," he cried, proceeding to buckle his garments round him, "up
with you. Ketch the hosses, an' put to. Look alive, will you? grease
your jints, _do_. Now, strangers, I'll shew you how we ketch a bar in
this lo-cation; bring yer rules, for sometimes he breaks his trap, an'
isn't there a spree jist!"
We need scarcely remark, that the latter part of this speech was made to
Sinton and his comrade, who were drawing the charges of their revolvers
and reloading.
"Is the trap far off?" inquired Ned.
"Quarter of an hour, or so. Look sharp, lads."
This exhortation was unnecessary, for the men had already caught three
stout horses, all of which were attached to an enormous waggon or van,
whose broad wheels accounted for the tracks discovered in the valley on
the previous evening.
"That's his cage," said the bear-catcher, replying to Ned's look of
inquiry. "It's all lined with sheet-iron, and would hold an ontamed
streak o' lightnin', it would. Now, then, drive ahead."
The lumbering machine jolted slowly down the hill as he spoke, and while
several of the party remained with the horses, Croft and our travellers,
with the remainder, pushed on ahead. In less than twenty minutes, they
came to a ravine filled with thick underwood, from the recesses of which
came forth sounds of fierce ursine wrath that would have deterred most
men from entering; but Croft knew his game was secure, and led the way
confidently through the bushes, until he reached a spot on which stood
what appeared to be a small log-cabin without door or window. Inside of
this cabin an enormous grizzly-bear raged about furiously, thrusting his
snout and claws through the interstices of the logs, and causing
splinters to fly all round him, while he growled in tones of the deepest
indignation.
"Oh! ain't he a bit o' thunder?" cried Croft, as he walked round the
trap, gazing in with glittering eyes at every opening between the logs.
"How in the world did you get him in there?" asked Ned Sinton, as soon
as his astonishment had abated sufficiently to loosen his tongue.
"Easy enough," replied Croft. "If ye obsarve the top o' the trap, ye'll
see the rope that suspended it from the limb o' that oak. Inside there
was a bit o' beef, so fixed up, that when Mister Caleb laid hold of it,
he pulled a sort o' trigger, an' down came the trap, shuttin' him in
slick, as ye see."
At this moment the powerful animal struggled so violently that he tilted
his prison on one side, and well-nigh overturned it.
"Look out, lads," shouted Croft, darting towards a tree, and cocking his
rifle,--actions in which he was imitated by all the rest of the party,
with surprising agility.
"Don't fire till it turns over," he cried, sternly, on observing that
two of the more timid members of his band were about to fire at the
animal's legs, which appeared below the edge of the trap. Fortunately,
the bear ceased its efforts just at that critical moment, and the trap
fell heavily back to its original position.
"By good luck!" shouted Croft; "an' here comes the cage. Range up on
the left, boys, and out with the hosses, they won't stand this."
The terrified animals were removed from the scene, trembling violently
from head to foot, and the whole band, applying their shoulders to the
wheels, slowly pushed the vehicle alongside of the trap until the sides
of the two met.
There was a strong door in the side of the trap, which was now removed
by being pulled inwards, revealing to bruin an aperture which
corresponded to another door opening into the iron-lined cage. There
were stout iron bars ready to be shot home the instant he condescended
to pass through this entrance; but Caleb, as Croft called him, shewed
himself sadly destitute of an inquiring disposition. He knew that there
was now a hole in his prison-wall, for he looked at it; he knew that a
hole either conducted into a place or out of it, for life-long
experience had taught him that; yet he refused to avail himself of the
opportunity, and continued to rage round the trap, glaring between the
logs at his foes outside. It is unreasonable to suppose that he was
afraid to go into the hole because it was a _dark_ one, for he was well
accustomed to such dark dens; besides, no one who looked at him could
for a moment suppose that he was, or could be, afraid of anything at
all. We must, therefore, put his conduct down to sheer obstinacy.
The men poked him with sticks; shouted at him; roared in his face; threw
water over him; and even tried the effect of a shot of powder at his
flank; but all to no purpose, although their efforts were continued
vigorously for full two hours. The bear would _not_ enter that hole on
any account whatever.
"Try another shot of powder at him," cried Croft, whose patience was now
almost exhausted.
The shot was fired at his flank, and was received with a ferocious
growl, while the strong wood-work of the trap trembled under his efforts
to escape.
"Ain't it vexin'?" said Croft, sitting down on the stump of a tree and
wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Ned Sinton and Tom, who had
done their utmost to assist their new acquaintance, sat down beside him
and admitted that it _was_ vexing. As if by one impulse, the whole
party then sat down to rest, and at that moment, having, as it were,
valiantly asserted his right of independent action, the bear turned
slowly round and quietly scrambled through the hole. The men sprang up;
the massive iron bars were shot into their sockets with a clang; and
bruin was a prisoner for life.
As neither Edward Sinton nor Tom Collins had any particular desire to
become bear-catchers, they bade their new friends adieu that afternoon,
and continued their journey. The road, as they advanced, became more
and more steep and rugged, so that they could only proceed at a walk,
and in many places experienced considerable difficulty, and ran no
little risk, in passing along the faces of cliffs, where the precipices
ascended hundreds of feet upwards like walls, on the one hand, and
descended sheer down into an unfathomable abyss, on the other. But the
exceeding grandeur of the scenery amply repaid their toils, and the deep
roar of that mighty cataract ever sounded in their ears. At length they
reached the head of the valley, and stood under the spray of the fall,
which, expanding far above and around the seething caldron whence it
sprang, drenched the surrounding country with perpetual showers.
Here a gap or pass in the mountains was discovered, ascending on the
left, and affording, apparently, an exit from the valley. Up this the
travellers toiled until they cleared the spray of the falls, and then
sat down beside a clump of trees to dry their garments in the sunshine
and to cook their mid-day meal.
"What a glorious thing it is, Tom, to wander thus unrestrained amid such
scenes!" said Ned Sinton, as he busied himself roasting a piece of
venison, which his rifle had procured but half-an-hour before. "How
infinitely more delightful than travelling in the civilised world, where
one is cheated at every turn, and watched and guarded as if robbery, or
murder, or high treason were the only probable objects a traveller could
have in view."
"`Comparisons,' my dear fellow--you know the proverb," replied Tom
Collins; "don't uphold California at the expense of the continent.
Besides, there are many in this world who would rather a thousand times
wander by the classic lake of Como, with its theatrical villas and its
enchanting sunshine and perfume, or paddle up the castellated Rhine,
than scramble here among wild rocks, and woods, and cataracts, with the
chance of meeting an occasional savage or a grizzly-bear."
"Go on, my boy," said Ned, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone, "you
haven't read me half a lesson yet. Besides, the `many' you refer to,
are there not hundreds, ay, thousands, whose chief enjoyment in
travelling is derived from the historical associations called up by the
sight of the ruined castles and temples of classic ground--whose delight
it is to think that here Napoleon crossed the Alps, as Hannibal did
before him, (and many a nobody has done after him), that there, within
these mouldering ruins, the oracles of old gave forth their voice--
forgetting, perhaps, too easily, while they indulge in these
reminiscences of the past, that the warrior's end was wholesale murder,
and that the oracle spoke only to deceive poor ignorant human nature.
Ha! I would not give one hearty dash into pure, uncontaminated nature
for all the famous `tours' put together."
Ned looked round him as he spoke, with a glow of enthusiasm that neither
badinage nor philosophy could check.
"Just look around thee," he continued; "open thine ears, Tom, to the
music of yon cataract, and expand thy nostrils to the wild perfume of
these pines."
"I wouldn't, at this moment," quietly remarked Tom, "exchange for it the
perfume of that venison steak, of which I pray thee to be more
regardful, else thou'lt upset it into the fire."
"Oh! Tom--incorrigible!"
"Not at all, Ned. While you flatter yourself that you have all the
enthusiastic study of nature to yourself, here have I succeeded, within
the last few minutes, in solving a problem in natural history which has
puzzled my brains for weeks past."
"And, pray thee, what may that be, most sapient philosopher?"
"Do you see yonder bird clinging to the stem of that tree, and pitching
into it as if it were its most deadly foe?"
"I do--a woodpecker it is."
"Well," continued Tom, sitting down before his portion of the venison
steak, "that bird has cleared up two points in natural history, which
have, up till this time, been a mystery to me. The one was, why
woodpeckers should spend their time in pecking the trees so incessantly;
the other was, how it happened that several trees I have cut down could
have had so many little holes bored in their trunks, and an acorn neatly
inserted into each. Now that little bird has settled the question for
me. I caught him in the act not ten minutes ago. He flew to that tree
with an acorn in his beak, tried to insert it into a hole, which didn't
fit, being too small; so he tried another, which did fit, poked the nut
in, small end first, and tapped it scientifically home. Now, why did he
do it? That's the question."
"Because he wanted to, probably," remarked Ned; "and very likely he lays
up a store of food for winter in this manner."
"Very possibly. I shall make a note of this, for I'm determined to have
it sifted to the bottom. Meanwhile, I'll trouble you for another junk
of venison."
It was many weeks afterwards ere Tom Collins succeeded in sifting this
interesting point to the bottom; but perhaps the reader may not object
to have the result of his inquiries noted at this point in our story.
Many of the trees in California, on being stripped of their bark, are
found to be perforated all over with holes about the size of a
musket-ball. These are pierced by the woodpecker with such precision
and regularity that one might believe they had been cut out by a
ship-carpenter. The summer is spent by this busy little bird in making
these holes and in filling them with acorns. One acorn goes to one
hole, and the bird will not try to force the nut into a hole that is too
small for it, but flutters round the tree until it finds one which fits
it exactly. Thus one by one the holes are filled, and a store of food
is laid up for winter use in a larder which secures it from the
elements, and places it within reach of the depositor when the winter
snows have buried all the acorns that lie upon the ground, and put them
beyond the reach of woodpeckers. The birds never encroach on their
store until the snow has covered the ground, then they begin to draw
upon their bank; and it is a curious fact that the bills of these birds
are always honoured, for their instinct enables them to detect the bad
nuts with unerring certainty, so that their bank is always filled with
good ones. This matter of selecting the good nuts is a mere chance with
men, for often those shells which seem the soundest, are found to
contain a grub instead of a nut. Even the sagacious Indian is an
uncertain judge in this respect, but the woodpecker, provided by an
all-wise Creator with an unerring instinct, never makes a mistake in
selecting its store of food for winter.