Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1895 — Man and Bear Both Scared. [ARTICLE]

Man and Bear Both Scared.

“ Yes, we have a great many interesting experiences out in the Puget Sound country,” said the New Ehgland man lately returned from the State of Washington. "I saw a big brown bear one day when I was six miles from the nearest camp. He was about fifty feet ahead of me on the trail, and I was to leeward of him, so I just went round him.” “ Why didn't you shoot him?” ■“ Well, people that don’t know the forest always ask that, even after I told them I had only three shots left in my revolver and no other gun along. I should have been in a mess if I had only wounded him, you see. When he scented me I was a long way off.” "Didn’t he run after I you?” "Oh. those brown bears are as much afraid of a man as a man is of them. Why, I knew a fellow who J was going across a stream on a fallen ; tree once. The trunk of the big pine ■ was about five feet up from the ground on his side of the stream, and three feet on the bear’s side. He was picking his steps and didn't look to t)he other side of the water, sixty feet or so. When he got fairly up onto the log there was the bear coming. They were both so dead scared they tumbled off into the water on different sides of the log.” “What happened next?” "Nothing. They both swam ashore on their own sides of the river, and put off through the forest. I don’t suppose there ever was a man and a bear more surprised or worse scared.”