The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1894-09-08

ton. The three of us had nearly reached
the cliff when we suddenly a
grizzly bear who was out for business.
The surprise was mutual, out the pleasure
seemed to be all on one side. The artist
disappeared among the rocks to the right
and the poet among the brush to the left,
and for 90 second we were left facing old
Ephriam with a dim consciousness that
something was about to happen.
For the benefit of such of our readers as
haven't studied natural history, we will
state that the grizzly bear is an animal
about the size of a Queen Anne cottage
and appears to have a veranda built all
around him to improve his style Of archi-
lecture. He differs from an elephant in
having teeth about a foot long, and 40 one
hearing his claws rattling on the rocks
could mistake him for a buffalo bull. Way
back, before Christopher Columbus discOv-
cred America, something happened to
make the grizzly bear mad at all mankind,
and this feeling has descended down to
the latest edition.. That bear not only got
his dande up inside of 10 seconds, but it
wasn't half a minute before he had fully
made up his mind that we were his NUT
ton. When he moved for us, we moved for
a tree. We beat him by a few seconds.
We never had any particular business
dealings with a grizzly bear before, but it
struck us that we couldn't move too rapid
ly nor climb too high. When we recovered
consciousness, we were seated on the limb
of a tree 20 feet above the earth, and the
bear was looking up at us with an express
sion of curiosity and disappointment. At
some stage of the game he may lave run
across an Arizona editor who had failed in
business and committed suicide, but we
IN~S4 N1io- L. Ill
before. He lac counted on a sure thing
and got left, and for some minutes his
chagrin was plainly apparent. We sup
posed, as a matter of course, that after
realizing the situation the critter would
start off with an ambition to pick up the
artist or the poet, but he wanted editorial
meat and was willing to wait for it. 1t
was 10 O'Clock in the morning when he
freed us. We were there at high noon, at
shutdown, at daybreak next morning. The
bear Staid right by us, and we Staid
right by the bear. There was but little
romance in the situation for US, and we
couldn't say hat the bear appeared to take
solid comfort. We had never seen any
thing in natural history about a man up a
tree in Arizona and a grizzly waiting for
him to drop into a red mouthed cavern or
namented with ivory spikes and could
only give a rough guess as to how long the
situation would continue to be strained.
We were somewhat trOubled with insOm-
MIA, but so was the bear, and this latter
fact was something of a consolation. We
had to keep awake to maintain our hold
on the limb, and he had to do the same
thing so as not to miss US in case we came
off the perch.
About midnight a large and we'll kept
mountain lion 1iro0-aroI 0I1r SjtIJofiDT
and came down on us with many pleasant
anticlpatiOns, and we almost felt sorry for
him when he made out the true state of
affairs. The grizzly seltishly refused to
whack up on the find, " and after squan-
dering an hOur of his valuable time the
lion went off toward camp to see if he
cOuldn't pick up something good on his
own account. We couldn't go to the gen |
tlemen in camp, and they searched in the
wrong direction to locate US. After we
had been perched in the tree 26 hours, |
most of the time looking the bear full in
the face, we began to notice a change of
expression. An hour later he closed his
jaws, gave us a long, lingering look of
contempt and ambled off to strike some
thing which couldn't climb. The gentle |
men were prOfuse in their apologies when
we reached camp, but we tarried only long
enough TO put the saddle on our mule. |
We were in a hurry to see the doctor who
had discovered from the fur on our tongue
that unless we put in two full weeks on
the We would be liable to a fall
stroke of apoplexy. We rode straight TO
his office, but from a window he had seen
us as we came over the hill two miles
away and could not be found. Up TO date
we have been unable TO realize that we are
on the ground, and every two or three
minutes we instinctively reach out for
something and feel our hair stand on end.
We shall be all right in aday or two, how
ever, and the next issue of THE KICKER
will be up TO the usual standard in all re-
spects.