Lady Mary and Her Nurse; Or, A Peep into the Canadian Forest

by Catharine Parr Strickland Traill

"The beach before us was of bright sand, and the sun was about, [Footnote: We find some curious expressions in this Journal, for Peter Jacobs is an Indian, writing not his own, but a foreign language.] when I saw an object moving on the shore; it appeared to be a man, and seemed to be making signals of distress. We were all weary and hungry, but thinking it was a fellow-creature in distress, we pulled towards him. Judge of our surprise when the stranger proved to be an enormous bear.

"He was seated on his hams, and what we thought his signals were his raising himself on his hind legs to pull down the berries from a high bush, and, with his paws full sitting down again to eat them at his leisure.

"Thus he continued daintily enjoying his ripe fruit in the posture some lapdogs are taught to assume while eating. On we pulled, and forgot our hunger and weariness; the bear still continued breakfasting.

"We got as close on shore as the shoals would permit, and John, (one of the Indians,) taking my double-barrelled gun, leaped into the water, gun in hand, and gained the beach. Some dead brushwood hid the bear from John's sight, but from the canoe we could see both John and the bear.

"The bear now discovered us, and advanced towards us; and John, not seeing him for the bush, ran along the beach towards him. The weariness from pulling all night, and having eaten no food, made me lose my presence of mind, for I now remembered that the gun was only loaded with duck-shot, and you might as well meet a bear with a gun loaded with peas.

"John was in danger, and we strained at our paddles to get to his assistance; but as the bear was a very large one, and as we had no other firearms, we should have been but poor helps to John in the hug of a wounded bear. The bear was at the other side of the brush-heap: John heard the dry branches cracking, and he dodged into a hollow under a bush. The bear passed, and was coursing along the sand, but as he passed by where John lay, bang went the gun.—The bear was struck.

"We saw him leap through the smoke to the very spot where we had last seen John. We held our breath; but instead of the cry of agony we expected to hear from John, bang went the gun again—John is not yet caught. Our canoe rushed through the water.—We might yet be in time; but my paddle fell from my hand with joy as I saw John pop his head above the bush, and with a shout point to the side of the log on which he stood, 'There he lies, dead enough.' We were thankful indeed to our Great Preserver."—Peter Jacob's Journal.

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_]