Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1910 — TWO BEARS. [ARTICLE]

TWO BEARS.

To deal with living grizzlies, admire, understand, and even lore them, and to be the first man to domesticate them, was the Jife history of James Capen Adams, writes W. H. Wright in the "Grizzly Bear.” The story of Adams’ career is told in a book entitled, “The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter of California.”

It was on Adams’ first expedition, somewhere in eastern Washington, that, having shot an old grizzly that was followed by two yearling cubs, and having; after many difficulties and repeated failures, captured the youngsters, he came into possession of “Lady Washington,” destined henceforth to .be his companion and servant. She was already old enough to resent' the restriction of her liberty, and it was not until he had supplemented kindness with discipline that she accepted her new position in the scheme of life.

“From that time to this,” Adams says, “she has always been with me; and often has she shared my dangers and privations, borne my burdens and partaken of my meals. The reader may be surprised to hear of a grizzly companion and friend, but Lady Washington has been both to me. He may hardly credit the accounts of my nestling up between her and the fire to keep both sides warm under the frosty skies of the mountains, but all this is true.” The details of her trailing, the gradual augmentation of her liberty, the way in which she came to follow him to the hunt, and finally to consent to bear the trophies of these joint expeditions back to camp makes fascinating reading, and Adams seems, naturally enough, to have valued her affection. But the following year her “nose was put out of joint.” During one of his hunts in the Yosemite Valley, in the spring of 1854, Adams located the winter quarters of a grizzly bear, from which the occupant had not yet emerged, and deciding, from the sounds that reached him in his careful reconnoitering, that the occupant was a female with young, he determined to watch for her appearance, kill her, and secure the cubs.

The adventure proved a thrilling one, and at the conclusion of It he found himself in possession of a grizzly bear so small and helpless that he succeeded in raising it only by Inducing a greyhound, that accompanied the party, and had a young family of her own at the time, to adopt it in lieu of two out of her three offspring. Thus “Ben Franklin” and his fosterbrother grew up in amity, and continued to be sworn allies through life. Ben, having never known the world under any other guise, accepted it frankly as he found it. He not only did not have to unlearn the habits of the savage, but seems never to have developed them, at least not toward his master. He was never chained, he slept for the most part in Adams’ company. and when at last the ultimate test of allegiance was unexpectedly presented to him, he took sides unhesitatingly with his adopted master against his own relations. Adams, while accompanied by Ben Franklin, was attacked by a wounded grizzly. Ben instantly joined in the fight, and although himself badly bitten, saved his master’s life.