it in one of his fables.  Two men are assailed by a bear, and one climbs a tree while the other throws himself upon the ground and feigns death.  The bear sniffs at the man on the ground, who holds his breath, concludes that the man is dead, and goes away.  The man who climbed the tree rejoins his companion, and having seen the bear sniffing at his head, asks him facetiously what the bear said to him.  The man who played ’possum replies that the bear told him to beware of keeping company with those who in time of danger leave their friends in the lurch.

This I do know, that bears often invade camps in search of food and refrain from molesting men asleep or pretending to be asleep.  Upon one occasion a Grizzly of very bad reputation and much feared by residents in his district, came into my camp on a pitch dark night, and as it would have been futile to attempt to draw a bead on him and a fight would have endangered two members of the party who were incapable of defending themselves, I cautioned everyone to feign sleep and not to show signs of life if the bear sniffed in their faces.  The injunction was obeyed, the bear satisfied his curiosity, helped himself to food and went away without molesting anybody.

And that is not an isolated instance.  One night a Grizzly invaded a bivouac, undeterred by the still blazing fire, and tried to reach a haunch of venison hung upon a limb directly over one of the party.  The man—­Saml Snedden, the first settler in Lockwood Valley, Cal.—­awoke and saw the great beast towering over him and stretching up in a vain effort to reach the venison, and he greatly feared that in coming down to all fours again the bear might forget his presence and step upon him.  Snedden tried furtively to draw his rifle out from the blankets in which he had enveloped it, but found that he could not get the weapon, without attracting the bear’s attention and probably provoking immediate attack.  So he abandoned the attempt, kept perfectly still and watched the bear with half-closed eyes.  The Grizzly realized that the meat was beyond his reach, and with a sighing grunt came down to all fours, stepping upon and crushing flat a tin cup filled with water within a foot of the man’s head.  The bear inquisitively turned the crushed cup over, smelt of it, sniffed at Snedden’s ear and slouched slowly away into the darkness as noiselessly as a phantom, and only one man in the camp knew he had been there except by the sign of his footprints and the flattened cup.

Many hunters have told me of similar experiences, and never have I heard of one instance of unprovoked attack upon a sleeping person by a bear, or for that matter by any other of the large carnivorae of this country.  Only one authentic instance of a bear feeding on human flesh have I known, and that was under unusual circumstances.