CHAPTER VI.

_THE BEARS._

Except the great cats, no creatures have longer held a place in human interest than the BEARS. Their size and formidable equipment of claws and teeth give the touch of fear which goes with admiration. On the other hand, they do not, as a rule, molest human beings, who see them employing their great strength on apparently insignificant objects with some amusement. Except one species, most bears are largely fruit and vegetable feeders. The sloth-bear of India sucks up ants and grubs with its funnel-like lips; the Malayan bear is a honey-eater by profession, scarcely touching other food when it can get the bees' store; and only the great polar bear is entirely carnivorous. The grizzly bear of the Northern Rocky Mountains is largely a flesh-eater, consuming great quantities of putrid salmon in the Columbian rivers. But the ice-bear is ever on the quest for living or dead flesh; it catches seals, devours young sea-fowl and eggs, and can actually kill and eat the gigantic walrus.

Every one will have noticed the deliberate flat-footed walk of the bears. This is due partly to the formation of the feet themselves. The whole sole is set flat upon the ground, and the impressions in a bear's track are not unlike those of a man's footsteps. The claws are not capable of being retracted, like those of the Cats; consequently they are worn at the tips where the curve brings them in contact with the ground. Yet it is surprising what wounds these blunt but hard weapons will inflict on man--wounds resembling what might be caused by the use of a very large garden-rake. Against other animals protected by hair bears' claws are of little use. Dogs would never attack them so readily as they do were they armed with the talons of a leopard or tiger. The flesh-teeth in both jaws of the bear are unlike those of other carnivora. The teeth generally show that bears have a mixed diet. Bears appear to have descended from some dog-like ancestor, but to have been much modified.

Except the ice-bear, all the species are short and very bulky. It is said that a polar bear has been killed which weighed 1,000 lbs. It is far the largest, and most formidable in some respects, of all the Carnivora. The claws of the grizzly bear are sometimes 5 inches long over the outer curve. All bears can sit upright on their hams, and stand upright against a support like a tree. Some can stand upright with no aid at all. Except the grizzly bear, they can all climb, many of them very well. In the winter, if it be cold, they hibernate. In the spring, when the shoots of the early plants come up, they emerge, hungry and thin, to seek their food. Bears were formerly common in Britain, and were exported for the Roman amphitheatres. The prehistoric cave-bears were very large. Their remains have been found in Devon, Derbyshire, and other counties. The species inhabiting Britain during the Roman period was the common brown bear of Europe.

THE COMMON BROWN BEAR.

Only one species of bear is found in Europe south of the ice-line, though above it the white ice-bear inhabits Spitzbergen and the islands off the White Sea. This is the BROWN BEAR, the emblem of Russia in all European caricature, and the hero of innumerable fragments of folklore and fable, from the tents of the Lapps to the nurseries of English children. Except the ice-bear, it is far the largest of European carnivora, but varies much in size. Russia is the main home of the brown bear, but it is found in Sweden and Norway, and right across Northern Asia. It is also common in the Carpathian Mountains, in the Caucasus, and in Mount Pindus in Greece. In the south it is found in Spain and the Pyrenees, and a few are left in the Alps. The dancing-bears commonly brought to England are caught in the Pyrenees. The "Queen's bear," so called because its owner was allowed to exhibit it at Windsor, was one of these. But lately dancing-bears from Servia and Wallachia have also been seen about our roads and streets. In Russia the bear grows to a great size. Some have been killed of 800 lbs. in weight. The fur is magnificent in winter, and in great demand for rich Russians' sledge-rugs. The finest bear-skins of all are bought for the caps of our own Grenadier and Coldstream Guards. In the Alps the bears occasionally visit a cow-shed in winter and kill a cow; but as a rule the only damage done by those in Europe is to the sheep on the hills in the far north of Norway. Tame brown bears are amusing creatures, but should never be trusted. They are always liable to turn savage, and the bite is almost as severe as that of a tiger. Men have had their heads completely crushed in by the bite of one of these animals. In Russia bears are shot in the following manner. When the snow falls, the bears retire into the densest thickets, and there make a half-hut, half-burrow in the most tangled part to hibernate in. The bear is tracked, and then a ring made round the cover by beaters and peasants. The shooters follow the track and rouse the bear, which often charges them, and is forthwith shot. If it escapes, it is driven in by the beaters outside. High fees are paid to peasants who send information that a bear is harboured in this way. Sportsmen in St. Petersburg will go 300 or 400 miles to shoot one on receipt of a telegram.

The brown bear, like the reindeer and red deer, is found very little modified all across Northern Asia, and again in the forests of North America. There, however, it undergoes a change. Just as the red deer is found represented by a much larger creature, the wapiti, so the brown bear is found exaggerated into the great bear of Alaska. The species attains its largest, possibly, in Kamchatka, on the Asiatic side of Bering Sea; but the Alaskan bear has the credit with sportsmen of being the largest. A skin of one of the former, brought to the sale-rooms of Sir Charles Lampson & Co., needed two men to carry it. Last spring, in the sale-rooms of the same great firm, some persons present measured the skin of an Alaskan bear which was 9 feet across the shoulders from paw to paw.

THE GRIZZLY BEAR.

This is a very distinct race of brown bear. It has a flat profile, like the polar bear; in addition it grows to a great size, is barely able to climb trees, and has the largest claws of any--they have been known to measure 5 inches along the curve. The true grizzly, which used to be found as far north as 61° latitude and south as far as Mexico, is a rare animal now. Its turn for cattle-killing made the ranchmen poison it, and rendered the task an easy one. It is now only found in the Northern Rocky Mountains, and perhaps in North California and Nevada. Formerly encounters with "Old Ephraim," as the trappers called this bear, were numerous and deadly. It attacked men if attacked by them, and often without provocation. The horse, perhaps more than its rider, was the object of the bear. Lewis and Clarke measured a grizzly which was 9 feet long from nose to tail. The weight sometimes reaches 800 lbs. Measurements of much larger grizzly bears have been recorded, but it is difficult to credit them. On a ranche near the upper waters of the Colorado River several colts were taken by grizzly bears. One of them was found buried according to the custom of this bear, and the owner sat up to shoot the animal. Having only the old-fashioned small-bored rifle of the day, excellent for shooting deer or Indians, but useless against so massive a beast as this bear, unless hit in the head or heart, he only wounded it. The bear rushed in, struck him a blow with its paw (the paw measures a foot across), smashed the rifle which he held up as a protection, and struck the barrel on to his head. The man fell insensible, when the bear, having satisfied himself that he was dead, picked him up, carried him off, and buried him in another hole which it scratched near the dead colt. It then dug up the colt and ate part of it, and went off. Some time later the man came to his senses, and awoke to find himself "dead and buried." As the earth was only roughly thrown over him, he scrambled out, and saw close by the half-eaten remains of the colt. Thinking that it might be about the bear's dinner-time, and remembering that he was probably put by in the larder for the next meal, he hurried home at once, and did not trouble the bear again. Not so a Siberian peasant, who had much the same adventure. He had been laughed at for wishing to shoot a bear, and went out into the woods to do so. The bear had the best of it, knocked him down, and so frightfully mangled his arm that he fainted. Bruin then buried him in orthodox bear fashion; and the man, when he came to, which he fortunately did before the bear came back, got up, and made his way to the village. There he was for a long time ill, and all through his sickness and delirium talked of nothing but shooting the bear. When he got well, he disappeared into the forest with his gun, and after a short absence returned with the bear's skin!

THE AMERICAN BROWN BEAR.

The brown bear of America is closely allied to that of Europe; it was first described by Sir John Richardson, who called it the Barrenlands Bear, and noted, quite rightly, that it differed from the grizzly in the smallness of its claws. The difference in the profile is very marked--the brown bear having a profile like that of the European bear, while that of the grizzly is flat. The brown bear of North America lives largely on the fruits and berries of the northern plants, on dead deer, and on putrid fish, of which quantities are left on the banks of the northern rivers. Whether the large brown bear of the Rocky Mountains is always a grizzly or often this less formidable race is doubtful. The writer inclines to think that it is only the counterpart of the North European and the North Asiatic brown bear. The following is Sir Samuel Baker's account of these bears. He says: "When I was in California, experienced informants told me that no true grizzly bear was to be found east of the Pacific slope, and that Lord Coke was the only Britisher who had ever killed a real grizzly in California. There are numerous bears of three if not four kinds in the Rocky Mountains. These are frequently termed grizzlies; but it is a misnomer. The true grizzly is far superior in size, but of similar habits, and its weight is from 1,200 lbs. to 1,400 lbs." After giving various reasons for believing this to be a fair weight, Sir Samuel Baker adds that this weight is equivalent to that of an English cart-horse. There are certainly three Rocky Mountain bears--the Grizzly, the Brown, and the small Black Bear. There is probably also another--a cross between the black and the brown. It is ridiculous to say that the brown bears which come to eat the refuse on the dust-heaps of the hotels in the Yellowstone Park, and let ladies photograph them, are savage grizzly bears.

THE SYRIAN BEAR.

This bear, which figures in the story of Elisha, is a variety of the brown bear. It is found from the Caucasus to the mountains of Palestine, and is a smaller animal than the true brown bear, weighing about 300 lbs. The fur in summer is of a mixed rusty colour, with a whitish collar on the chest. It steals the grapes on Mount Horeb, and feeds upon ripe fruits, apples, chestnuts, corn, and the like. It is then ready to face the long winter sleep.

THE AMERICAN BLACK BEAR.

This is the smallest North American species, and perhaps the most harmless. It seldom weighs more than 400 lbs. Its coat is short and glossy, and its flesh, especially in autumn, is esteemed for food. The early backwoodsmen found it a troublesome neighbour. The bears liked Indian corn, and were not averse to a young pig. "Like the deer," says Audubon, "it changes its haunts with the seasons, and for the same reason--viz. the desire of obtaining food. During the spring months it searches for food in the low alluvial lands that border the rivers, or by the margins of the inland lakes. There it procures abundance of succulent roots, and of the tender, juicy stems of plants, upon which it chiefly feeds at that season. During the summer heat it enters the gloomy swamps, and passes much of its time in wallowing in the mud like a hog, and contents itself with crayfish, roots, and nettles; now and then, when hard pressed by hunger, it seizes a young pig, or perhaps a sow or calf. As soon as the different kinds of berries ripen, the bears betake themselves to the high grounds, followed by their cubs. In much-retired parts of the country, where there are no hilly grounds, it pays visits to the maize-fields, which it ravages for a while. After this the various kinds of nuts and grapes, acorns and other forest fruits, attract its attention. The black bear is then seen wandering through the woods to gather this harvest, not forgetting to rob every tree which it comes across."

THE INDIAN SLOTH-BEAR.

Few people would believe that this awkward and ugly beast is so formidable as it is. It is the commonest Indian species, seldom eats flesh, prefers sucking up the contents of a white ants' nest to any other meal, and is not very large; from 200 lbs. to 300 lbs. is the weight of a male. But the skull and jaws are very strong, and the claws long and curved. As they are used almost like a pickaxe when the bear wishes to dig in the hardest soil, their effect upon the human body can be imagined.

Sir Samuel Baker says that there are more accidents to natives of India and Ceylon from this species than from any other animal.

Mr. Watts Jones writes an interesting account of his sensations while being bitten by one of these bears: "I was following up a bear which I had wounded, and rashly went to the mouth of a cave to which it had got. It charged. I shot, but failed to stop it. I do not know exactly what happened next, neither does my hunter who was with me; but I believe, from the marks in the snow, that in his rush the bear knocked me over backwards--in fact, knocked me three or four feet away. When next I remember anything, the bear's weight was on me, and he was biting my leg. He bit, two or three times. I felt the flesh crush, but I felt no pain at all. It was rather like having a tooth out with gas. I felt no particular terror, though I thought the bear had got me; but in a hazy sort of way I wondered when he would kill me, and thought what a fool I was to get killed by a stupid beast like a bear. The shikari then very pluckily came up and fired a shot into the bear, and he left me. I felt the weight lift off me, and got up. I did not think I was much hurt.... The main wound was a flap of flesh torn out of the inside of my left thigh and left hanging. It was fairly deep, and I could see all the muscles working underneath when I lifted it up to clean the wound." This anecdote was sent to Mr. J. Crowther Hirst to illustrate a theory of his, that the killing of wild animals by other animals is not a painful one.

Rustem Pasha, once Turkish Ambassador in England, had an accident when brown bear shooting in Russia, and writes of it in the same sense: "When I met the accident alluded to, the bear injured both my hands, but did not tear off part of the arm or shoulder. In the moment of desperate struggle, the intense excitement and anger did, in fact, render me insensible to the feeling of actual pain as the bear gnawed my left hand, which was badly torn and perforated with holes, most of the bones being broken."

There is good reason to believe that when large carnivora, or beasts large in proportion to the size of their victims, strike and kill them with a great previous shock, the sense of pain is deadened. Not so if the person or animal is seized quietly. Then the pain is intense, though sometimes only momentary. A tigress seized Mr. J. Hansard, a forest officer in Ceylon, by the neck. In describing his sensations afterwards, he said: "The agony I felt was something frightful. My whole skull seemed as if it were being crushed to atoms in the jaws of the great brute. I certainly felt the most awful pain as she was biting my neck; but not afterwards, if I can remember." Sir Samuel Baker says he has twice seen the sloth-bear attack a howdah-elephant. Lord Edward St. Maur, son of the Duke of Somerset, was killed by one. Mr. Sanderson, the head of the Government Elephant-catching Department, used to hunt bears in the jungle with bull-terriers. Against these the bear was unable to make a good fight. They seized it by the nose; and as its claws were not sharp like those of the leopard, the bear could not get them off.

This bear seldom produces more than two or three young at a birth. The young cub is very ugly, but very strong, especially in the claws and legs. A six weeks' old cub has been turned upside-down in a basket, which was shaken violently, without dislodging the little animal clinging inside.

THE ISABELLINE BEAR AND HIMALAYAN BLACK BEAR.

The former animal is a medium-sized variety of the brown bear. The coat in winter is of a beautiful silver-tipped cinnamon colour. The HIMALAYAN BLACK BEAR has a half-moon of white on its throat. The habits of both do not differ markedly from those of the brown bear of Europe.

Recently black bears have been most troublesome in Kashmir, attacking and killing and wounding the woodcutters with no provocation. Dr. E. T. Vere, writing from Srinagar, says: "Every year we have about half a dozen patients who have been mauled by bears. Most of our people who are hurt are villagers or shepherds. Bears have been so shot at in Kashmir that, although not naturally very fierce, they have become truculent. When they attack men, they usually sit up and knock the victim over with a paw. They then make one or two bites at the arm or leg, and often finish up with a snap at the head. This is the most dangerous part of the attack. One of our fatal cases this year was a boy, the vault of whose skull was torn off and lacerated. Another man received a compound fracture of the cranium. A third had the bones of his face smashed and lacerated. He had an axe, but said, 'When the bear sat up, my courage failed me.'"

THE MALAYAN SUN-BEAR.

These small, smooth-coated bears have a yellow throat-patch like a mustard plaster, and are altogether the most amusing and comical of all the tribe. They are almost as smooth as a pointer dog, and are devoted to all sweet substances which can be a substitute for honey, their main delicacy when wild. There are always a number of these bears at the Zoo incessantly begging for food. When one gets a piece of sugar, he cracks it into small pieces, sticks them on the back of his paw, and licks the mess until the paw is covered with sticky syrup, which he eats with great gusto. This bear is found in the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, and Java. It is only 4 feet high, or sometimes half a foot taller. It is more in the habit of walking upright than any other species.

THE POLAR BEAR.

ICE-BEAR is the better name for this, the most interesting in its habits of all the bears. It is an inhabitant of the lands of polar darkness and intense cold, and one of the very few land animals which never try to avoid the terrible ordeal of the long Arctic night, which rolls on from month to month. It can swim and dive nearly as well as a seal, climbs the icebergs, and goes voyages on the drifting ice, floating hundreds of miles on the polar currents, and feeding on the seals which surround it. Of the limits of size of the ice-bear it is impossible to speak with certainty. From the skins brought to this country the size of some of them must be enormous. One which lived for more than thirty years at the Zoo was of immense length and bulk. When the first discoverers went to the Arctic Seas, dressed in thick clothes and skins, the polar bears took them for seals. On Bear Island, below Spitzbergen, a Dutch sailor sat down on the snow to rest. A bear walked up behind him, and seized and crushed his head, evidently not in the least aware of what kind of animal it had got hold of. When the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition was wintering in Franz-Josef Land, the bears were a positive nuisance. They were not afraid of man, and used to come round the huts at all hours. The men shot so many that they formed a valuable article of food for the dogs. The flesh is said to be unwholesome for men. The power of these bears in the water is wonderful; though so bulky, they are as light as a cork when swimming, and their strong, broad feet are first-class paddles. Whenever a dead whale is found near the shore, the polar bears assemble to feed upon it. In the various searches for the Franklin Expedition they pulled to pieces nearly all the cabins erected to hold provisions for the sledge-parties. In one case it was found that the bears had amused themselves by mounting the roof of a half-buried hut, and sliding down the snowy, frozen slope. Cubs are often brought home in whaling- and sealing-ships, after the mothers have been shot. There is a ready sale of them for Continental menageries. Herr Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, by purchasing them quite young, has induced bears to live on good terms with tigers, boar-hounds, and leopards.

The manoeuvres of an ice-bear in the water are marvellous to watch. Though so bulky a beast, it swims, dives, rolls over and over, catches seals or fish, or plays both on and under the water with an ease and evident enjoyment which show that it is in its favourite element. One favourite game of the ice-bear is to lie on its back in the water, and then to catch hold of its hind toes with its fore feet, when it resembles a half-rolled hedgehog of gigantic size. It then rolls over and over in the water like a revolving cask. Its footsteps are absolutely noiseless, as the claws are shorter than in the land-bear's, and more muffled in fur. This noiseless power of approach is very necessary when it has to catch such wary creatures as basking seals. A very large proportion of the food formerly eaten by ice-bears in summer was probably putrid, as they were always supplied with a quantity of the refuse carcases of whales and seals left by the whaling-ships. This may account for the bad results to the sailors who ate the bears' flesh. Now the whaling industry is so little pursued that the bears have to catch their dinners for themselves, and eat fresh food.

The Arctic explorer Nordenskiöld saw much of the ice-bears on his voyages, and left us what is perhaps the best description of their attempts to stalk men, mistaking them for other animals. "When the polar bear observes a man," he writes in his "Voyage of the Vega," "he commonly approaches him as a possible prey, with supple movements and a hundred zigzag bends, in order to conceal the direction he means to take, and to prevent the man feeling frightened. During his approach he often climbs up on to blocks of ice, or raises himself on his hind legs, in order to get a more extensive view. If he thinks he has to do with a seal, he creeps or trails himself forward on the ice, and is then said to conceal with his fore paws the only part of his body that contrasts with the white colour of the snow--his large black nose. If the man keeps quite still, the bear comes in this way so near that it can be shot at the distance of two gun-lengths, or killed with a lance, which the hunters consider safer."

When a vessel lies at anchor, a polar bear sometimes swims out to it, to inspect the visiting ship; it has also a special fancy for breaking open and searching stores of provisions, boats abandoned and covered over, and cabins of wrecked ships. One bear which had looted a provision depôt was found to have swallowed a quantity of sticking-plaster. The ice-bear has been met swimming at a distance of eighty miles from land, and with no ice in sight. This shows how thoroughly aquatic its habits and powers are. Polar bears do not hug their victims, like the brown bear, but bite, and use their immense feet and sharp claws. It has been said that when one catches a seal on the ice it will play with it as a cat does with a mouse. The size of these bears varies very much. Seven or eight feet from the tip of the nose to the tail is the usual length; yet they have been known to exceed even 13 feet in length. This would correspond to an immense difference in bulk and weight. An ice-bear was once found feeding on the body of a white whale, 15 feet in length, and weighing three or four tons. The whale could not have got on to the ice by itself, and it is difficult to imagine that any other creature except the bear could have dragged it there from the sea, where it was found floating. When hunting seals, polar bears will chase them in the water as an otter does a fish, but with what result is not known. Besides stalking them in the manner described above, they will mark the place at which seals are basking on the rim of an ice-floe, and then dive, and come up just at the spot where the seal would naturally drop into the water. Those shot for the sake of their skins are nearly all killed when swimming in the sea. The hunters mark a bear on an ice-floe, and approach it. The bear always tries to escape by swimming, and is pursued and shot through the head from the boat. When the females have a cub or cubs with them, they will often attack persons or boats which molest them; otherwise they do not willingly interfere with man, except, as has been said above, when they mistake men for seals or other natural prey.

The instances recorded of the affection shown by these animals for their young are somewhat pathetic. When the _Carcase_ frigate, which was engaged on a voyage of Arctic discovery, was locked in the ice, a she-bear and two cubs made their way to the ship, attracted by the scent of the blubber of a walrus which the crew had killed a few days before. They ran to the fire, and pulled off some of the walrus-flesh which remained unconsumed. The crew then threw them large lumps of the flesh which were lying on the ice, which the old bear fetched away singly, and laid before her cubs as she brought it, dividing it, and giving each a share, and reserving but a small portion for herself. As she was fetching away the last piece, the sailors shot both the cubs dead, and wounded the dam. Although she could only just crawl to the place where the cubs lay, she carried the lump of flesh which she had last fetched away, and laid it before them; and when she saw that they refused to eat, laid her paws on them, and tried to raise them up, moaning pitifully. When she found she could not stir them, she went to some distance, and looked back, and then returned, pawing them all over and moaning. Finding at last that they were lifeless, she raised her head towards the ship and uttered a growl, when the sailors killed her with a volley of musket-balls.

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