“I came to the place where you stayed last night, yesterday morning, and was told that there were a number of bears in the neighborhood, and that no one dared to hunt them.  I remarked that that was my business, and I would take a hand at it; I strapped on my revolvers and knife, shouldered my Kentucky rifle and started out.  I had not gone more than half a mile, when I discovered one of the animals I was in search of, and away my bullet sped striking him in the hip.  I made for a tree and he made for me!  I won the race by stopping on the topmost branch, while he howled at the base; while reloading my rifle I heard an answer to his wailing for me or for his companion — it didn’t matter which.  Very soon a second cry came from another direction, and still one more from the third point of the compass.  By this time one had reached the tree and I fired killing him.  Hastily reloading, I was just in time to fire as the second one responded to the first one’s howl; he fell dead; then the third arrived and shared the same fate.  Having allowed the first one to live as a decoy, his turn came last; then I descended and looked over my work — four full-grown bears lay dead at my feet.”

To corroborate this statement I will say that I saw one of them on the hooks in front of a butcher shop in Stockton, and the other three went to San Francisco on the same boat that I did.  I met the hunter on the street about a week later and he told me that he realized seven hundred dollars for his bears.  I do not make the statement as a bear story, but as a bare fact.

Life In the Mines.

The preceding pages were written about twenty years ago, and only covered about one and one-half years after leaving the Green Mountains of old Vermont.  Since which time, I have experienced nearly all of the vicissitudes of the State to the present time (1913).  I will now attempt to give an account of my stewardship from that time on.  I date my arrival in the State, Weaverville, about three miles below Hangtown (now Placerville), September 10th, 1849.  This was where I did my first mining, which was not, much of a success, on account of my weak condition caused by my having the so-called “land scurvy,” brought on from a want of vegetable food, and I left for Sacramento City where I remained for a week or two and then left and went to Grass Valley.  There I made a little money, and went to Sacramento City and bought two wagon loads of goods, went back to Grass Valley and started a hotel, ran it a few weeks, and the first thing I knew I was “busted.”

It is now in the winter of ’49 and ’50 and I went to Sacramento again, and from Sacramento to Beal’s Bar on the North Fork of the American River at the junction of the North and South Forks.  By this time I had gained my strength so that I was more like myself, and I bought a rocker, pick, shovel and pan and went into the gulches for gold.  I had fairly good luck until spring.  By this time