every kind of large and dangerous game that there is on the
earth,--lions, elephants, the African buffalo, and the rhinoceros.
The Indian tiger is perhaps the only one of the large savage
animals which he never encountered. Yet after meeting all these
and having some close shaves, especially with a wounded elephant
in Africa, he said that his narrowest escape was with this grizzly
bear.

It was when he had returned to the West and was on a hunt in
Idaho. He had had trouble with his guide, who got drunk, so they
parted company, and Roosevelt was alone. Looking down into a
valley, from a rocky ridge, he saw a dark object, which he
discovered was a large grizzly bear. He fired, and the bear giving
a loud grunt, as the bullet struck, rushed forward at a gallop
into a laurel thicket. Roosevelt paused at the edge of the thicket
and peered within, trying to see the bear, but knowing too much
about them to go into the brush where he was.

When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left
it, directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me
on the hillside, a little above. He turned his head stiffly
towards me; scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes
burned like embers in the gloom.

I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered
the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick.
Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and
challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw
the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me,
crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes, so that it was