The poor fellow became a misanthrope, owing to his terrible disfigurement, and was finally found drowned in the river near Coloma.

In 1850 a number of miners were camped upon the spot where the little town of Todd’s Valley now stands.  Among them were three brothers named Gaylord, who had just arrived from Illinois.  These young men used to help out the proceeds of their claim by an occasional hunt, taking their venison down to the river when killed, where a carcass was readily disposed of for two ounces.

One evening when the sun was about an hour high, one of the brothers took his rifle and went out upon the hills and did not return that night.  The following morning his two brothers set out in search and soon found him dead, bitten through the spine in the neck, evidently by a bear.  His rifle was unloaded and the tracks showed where he had fled, pursued by the angry animal, been overtaken, and killed.

On the succeeding day a hunt was organized and some twenty men turned out to seek revenge.  The bears, for there were two of them, were tracked into a deep rocky canyon running from Forest Hill to Big Bar.  Large rocks were rolled down its sides, and the bears were routed out and both killed.

In 1851, three men armed with Kentucky rifles, which were not only muzzle-loaders, but of small calibre and less effective than the ordinary .32 calibre rifle of to-day, were hunting deer on the divide between Volcano and Shirttail Canyons in Placer county.  In the heavy timber on the slope they encountered a large Grizzly coming up out of Volcano Canyon.  The bear was a hundred yards distant when they saw him and evinced no desire for trouble, and two of the hunters were more than willing to give him the trail and let him go about his business in peace.  The other, a man named Wright, who had killed small bears, but knew nothing about the Grizzly, insisted on attacking, and prepared to shoot.  The others assured him that a bullet from a Kentucky rifle at that distance would only provoke the bear to rush them, and begged him not to fire.  But Wright laughed at them and pulled trigger with a bead on the bear’s side, where even a heavy ball would be wasted.

The Grizzly reared upon his haunches, bit at the place where the ball stung him, and after waving his paws in the air two or three times, came directly for Wright with a fierce growl.  The party all took to their heels and separated, but the bear soon overtook Wright and with one blow of his paw struck the man, face downward, upon the snow and began biting him about the head, back and arms.  The other hunters, seeing the desperate case of their companion, rushed up and fired at the bear at close range, fortunately killing him with a bullet in the base of the brain.

Wright, on being relieved of the weight of his antagonist, sat up in a dazed condition, with the blood pouring in streams down his face.  He had received several severe bites in the back and arms, but the worst wound was on the head, where the bear had struck him with his claws.  His scalp was almost torn from his head, and a large piece of skull some three inches in diameter was broken out and lifted from the brain as cleanly as if done by the surgeon’s trephine.