animal being slow he started to climb a tree; but before he could get
far enough up she caught him, almost biting a piece out of the calf of
his leg, pulled him down, bit and cuffed him two or three times, and
then went on her way.

The only time Woody ever saw a man killed by a bear was once when he had
given a touch of variety to his life by shipping on a New Bedford whaler
which had touched at one of the Puget Sound ports. The whaler went up
to a part of Alaska where bears were very plentiful and bold. One day a
couple of boats' crews landed; and the men, who were armed only with an
occasional harpoon or lance, scattered over the beach, one of them,
a Frenchman, wading into the water after shell-fish. Suddenly a bear
emerged from some bushes and charged among the astonished sailors, who
scattered in every direction; but the bear, said Woody, "just had it in
for that Frenchman," and went straight at him. Shrieking with terror
he retreated up to his neck in the water; but the bear plunged in after
him, caught him, and disembowelled him. One of the Yankee mates then
fired a bomb lance into the bear's hips, and the savage beast hobbled
off into the dense cover of the low scrub, where the enraged sailor folk
were unable to get at it.

The truth is that while the grisly generally avoids a battle if
possible, and often acts with great cowardice, it is never safe to take
liberties with him; he usually fights desperately and dies hard when
wounded and cornered, and exceptional individuals take the aggressive on
small provocation.

During the years I lived on the frontier I came in contact with many
persons who had been severely mauled or even crippled for life by
grislies; and a number of cases where they killed men outright were