Though fruit and vegetables seem to be the natural food of the bear, they
also devour flesh, and even fish,--a fact of which the good Indian
Missionary assures us; and that being new to my young readers, I shall
give them in his own words:--

"A few evenings after we left the 'Rock,' while the men were before me
'tracking,' (towing the canoe,) by pulling her along by a rope from the
shore, I observed behind a rock in the river, what I took to be a black
fox. I stole upon it as quietly as possible, hoping to get a shot, but the
animal saw me, and waded to the shore. It turned out to be a young bear
fishing. The bear is a great fisherman. His mode of fishing is very
curious. He wades into a current, and seating himself upright on his hams,
lets the water come about up to his shoulders; he patiently waits until the
little fishes come along and rub themselves against his sides, he seizes
them instantly, gives them a nip, and with his left paw tosses them over
his shoulder to the shore. His left paw is always the one used for tossing
ashore the produce of his fishing. Feeling is the sense of which Bruin
makes use here, not sight.

"The Indians of that part say that the bear catches sturgeon when spawning
in the shoal-water; but the only fish that I know of their catching, is the
sucker: of these, in the months of April and May, the bear makes his daily
breakfast and supper, devouring about thirty or forty at a meal. As soon as
he has caught a sufficient number, he wades ashore, and regales himself on
the best morsels, which are the thick of the neck, behind the gills. The
Indians often shoot him when thus engaged."--Peter Jacob's Journal, p. 46_]