“Lake. 7-27-’03.  Major Pitcher, Yellowstone:  As many as seventeen bears in an evening appear on my garbage dump.  To-night eight or ten.  Campers and people not of my hotel throw things at them to make them run away.  I cannot, unless there personally, control this.  Do you think you could detail a trooper to be there every evening from say six o’clock until dark and make people remain behind danger line laid out by Warden Jones?  Otherwise I fear some accident.  The arrest of one or two of these campers might help.  My own guests do pretty well as they are told.  James Barton Key. 9 A.M.”

Major Pitcher issued the order as requested.

[Illustration:  Chambermaid and bear.]

At times the bears get so bold that they take to making inroads on the kitchen.  One completely terrorized a Chinese cook.  It would drive him off and then feast upon whatever was left behind.  When a bear begins to act in this way or to show surliness it is sometimes necessary to shoot it.  Other bears are tamed until they will feed out of the hand, and will come at once if called.  Not only have some of the soldiers and scouts tamed bears in this fashion, but occasionally a chambermaid or waiter girl at one of the hotels has thus developed a bear as a pet.

The accompanying photographs not only show bears very close up, with men standing by within a few yards of them, but they also show one bear being fed from the piazza by a cook, and another standing beside a particular friend, a chambermaid in one of the hotels.  In these photographs it will be seen that some are grizzlies and some black bears.

This whole episode of bear life in the Yellowstone is so extraordinary that it will be well worth while for any man who has the right powers and enough time, to make a complete study of the life and history of the Yellowstone bears.  Indeed, nothing better could be done by some one of our outdoor fauna naturalists than to spend at least a year in the Yellowstone, and to study the life habits of all the wild creatures therein.  A man able to do this, and to write down accurately and interestingly what he had seen, would make a contribution of permanent value to our nature literature.

In May, after leaving the Yellowstone, I visited the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and spent three days camping in the Yosemite Park with John Muir.  It is hard to make comparisons among different kinds of scenery, all of them very grand and very beautiful; yet personally to me the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, strange and desolate, terrible and awful in its sublimity, stands alone and unequaled.  I very earnestly wish that Congress would make it a national park, and I am sure that such course would meet the approbation of the people of Arizona.  As to the Yosemite Valley, if the people of California desire it, as many of them certainly do, it also should be taken by the National Government to be kept as a national park, just as the surrounding country, including some of the groves of giant trees, is now kept.