a dirty mess whatever they do not eat. The black bear does not average
much more than a third the size of the grisly; but, like all its kind,
it varies greatly in weight. The largest I myself ever saw weighed was
in Maine, and tipped the scale at 346 pounds; but I have a perfectly
authentic record of one in Maine that weighed 397, and my friend, Dr.
Hart Merriam, tells me that he has seen several in the Adirondacks that
when killed weighed about 350.

I have myself shot but one or two black bears, and these were obtained
under circumstances of no special interest, as I merely stumbled on them
while after other game, and killed them before they had a chance either
to run or show fight.



CHAPTER III.--OLD EPHRAIM, THE GRISLY BEAR.

The king of the game beasts of temperate North America, because the most
dangerous to the hunter, is the grisly bear; known to the few remaining
old-time trappers of the Rockies and the Great Plains, sometimes as "Old
Ephraim" and sometimes as "Moccasin Joe"--the last in allusion to his
queer, half-human footprints, which look as if made by some mishapen
giant, walking in moccasins.

Bear vary greatly in size and color, no less than in temper and habits.
Old hunters speak much of them in their endless talks over the camp
fires and in the snow-bound winter huts. They insist on many species;
not merely the black and the grisly but the brown, the cinnamon, the
gray, the silver-tip, and others with names known only in certain
localities, such as the range bear, the roach-back, and the smut-face.