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Mint i ?0Z. XXVIII MOUNT AIRY, NORTH CAROLINA, THURSDAY, JULY 16, 1008 NO, 52 A BEAR STORY OF THE WILD WEST. How A Lone Miner Takes Honey from A Ledge of Rock and Gets in Close Quarters With A Grizzly Bear. Mr. A. is one of the most suc cessful mining men in California. It seems odd to some that a man of his wealth and influence should look back to the poverty and hardships of a prospector's life and ody, sometimes a little wist fully, "Those were good old iays." Like most men who have long roamed the mountains and des erts, he is an extremely interest ing talker, Some years ago, when he came to visit a son who was a classmate of mine at Stan ford University, I had the pleas ure of meeting him. The follow ing is his account of an experi ence with bees and bears. I have wh?.t is sometimes call ed a "sweet tooth." About my only extravagance is to buy a dime's worth of chocolates occas ionally, and eat them at one sit ting. This fondness for sweets once made a bear fan ily and a colony of bees and me a great deal of trouble. When I was working a pros pect in Shasta County I ran out of sugar. One day, after I had lived several weeks on the plain est of camp fare minus sweeten ing, I discovered a bee cave in a canon wall that overhangs , Pitt worked all afternoon and' even ing on a bee-smoker. The finish ed product was crude to look at; but when I considered that it was made of a rubber-boot top, a piece of "whang leather," a couple of .shakes, and an oyster-can with a hole in the bottom, and, more over, that it worked perfectly, I was very well satisfied. Some people sulphur bees, thus destroying every member of a colony to get their store; but I had learned from an old apiarist that by means of a bee-smoker loaded with burning cloth, one could render them too stupid to .sting without doing them injury. Early the next morning I set out after honey. The cave open ed about ten feet from the top of the cliff. A stout juniper-tree afforded safe anchorage for my rope, and made my descent an ea3y matter. The aperture, which was large enough to admit me in a half-upright position, went back into the cliff about five feet, to a couple of fissures. These fissures varied from a foot to a foot and a half in width, and .must have contained tons of hon ey, being hung full of comb, and .judging from the humming that ensued from the bowels of the cliff, of great depth. So far things had worked out ho well that I already saw myself returning to camp with a couple ( water-buckets full of honey, 'i'hen the tide turned. When I began pumping smoke into one .fissure, the bees came boiling out of the other. I turned the bel lows on them, and unsmoked re inforcements came from the in ner recesses of the first fissure. They were little black rascals of the wild variety; and to save myself from being smothered by their swarming on the veil, I turn ed the bellows upon myself, held my breath till I could get out of the tunnel, then climbed my rope. I popped up over the edge of the cl ff, aud found myself con fronted by a big she grizzly Evidently she had just emerged from the brush. We were both greatly surprised. Heretofore my experience with bears had been limited to an oc casional glimpse of one clawing up the earth in frantic haste to escape the scent and sound of man. There were a dozen bees under my veil, as many more burrowing in my hair, and I awaited the bear's plunge for the brush with some impatience. Then a fat, saucy cub came rol licking out from the brush, and the mother, with a stern glint of maternal duty in her eyes, made a lunge forward. I retired. I went back to the unfriendly bees. The smoker was lying weie I had let it fall, and I grabbed it up and worked the shake handles back and forth until the punctured oyster-can emitted smoke in volumes. The bees became the central fact now. I forgot that there were such things as bears. I might have died in that cave had I not kept my wits about me. But be fere the bees bicame too thick, I thought to wrap my coat about my head and throw myself oa the floor. I lay -there, "--'-, .ft&ea-i' coultiid it no longer, , i ventured to uncover my head, and was rejoiced to find that the bees were pretty well "under the influence," and that there was a little stream of good air at the bottom of the cave. The moment I got my breath I reloaded my magazine with rags and pumped smoke into both of these fissures until the wrathful hum of the oc cupants became a low, drowsy murmur. That I went to the entrance of the cave, cleared my lungs of burnt-rag fumes, and reconnoit ered the bear family. Fortunate it was that with me bee stings cause little or no swelling, or I should have had no eyesight for reconnoitering. There was no trouble in locat ing the bears. The old grizzly was peering over the edge of the cliff, about fifteen feet from the juniper-tree to which I had tied my rope. Apparently she was planning a descent upon me, but did not like the looks of the smoke pouring out of the mouth of my retreat. The cub was sitting near by, staring solemnly down into the chasm. I now noticed for the first time that just below Mother Bruin there were some irregularities running along the slanting face of the cliff, which gave evidence of having been used by bears as footholds in gaining access to the cavern. I had a light crowbar with me, and I took the tool and knocked off some knobs, which, by their claw-worn surfaces, gave evidence of having aided gener ations of bears in entering the bees' storehouse. By hanging on to my rope with one hand and us ing the bar as a club, I managed to clear the cliff of projections fer a distance of six feet from the mouth of the cave. While I was doing this, Mother Bruin stalked back and forth just above me, eying my operations belligerently. The littl fellow interested himself with the move ments of the rope as it twisted convulsively under the shifting strain of my weight, whereupon his wise mother removed him from possible harm by a rough clout over the head that rolled him over and over, and made him whimper mournfully. The cub was a comical mixture of gravity and mischief, and I took a liking to him from the first. A3 a finishing touch in making dangerous the trail of the bears, I improvised a swab by tying one of the smudge rags to the end of my crowbar, and wUh this im plement smeared tiff approach with a slippery coat of crushed honeycomb. I thought this quite a stroke of genius, and was re garding my work with a grin of satisfaction, when the bear, ob viously drawn on by the sight and smell of the sweet, hurried to the end of the trail and began to descend. My face straightened out with a jerk. Like many a complacent theorist before mc, I found my self filled with alarm at the pros pect of my scheme being sub jected to a practical test. I sud denly remembered that I knew little as to the clinging capacities of the bear family, and was not at all sure that the grizzly could not reach me. A moment later, when I saw the nimbleness with which she advanced along the face of the cliff, I became quite sure that she could enter the cave on a trot. It was a trying moment for me. I noticed, as I tore off the sticky swab rag from the end of the crowbar, that my fingers were all in a flutter. This passed in a reconds, though. I awaited -lnfnarh nf ih hear, har in of steadiness, but with little stom ach for a hand-to-hand fight with a grizzly on the face of that pre cipice. Apparently the bear did not ap prove of the place a3 a site for a battle-field, either; for just at this time, to my relief, she halt ed, and seemed in more than half a mind to back out. After a few moments she began moving for ward again, although more slow: J ly and wanly. She was seemingly drawn on quite as much by the sight and smell of the honey as by the de sire to exterminate me. Reach ing the "greased" approach, she stopped and began lapping greed ily at the crushed honeycomb. She enjoyed the honey, that was evident; but my presence at the feast annoyed her, and she show ed her displeasure by skinning her teeth and shooting me bale ful glances. The slipperiness of the approach now appeared still more like a bait-line, and al though nearly rigid with nervous tension, I began to feel a little foolish. But in a few minutes it came out that, after all, the laugh was on the bear. She became very busy and worried ip a search for a knob on which to rest her fore foot, and a little later decided that she dared advance no far ther. After polishing the cliff as far as the end of her tongue would reach, a very sour-visaged, disgruntled grizzly. I cou!d have laughed her to scorn, but decided to postpone this until I was safe within the four walls of my cabin. All this time the cub had been squatting above us, watching his mother lapping honey, his jowls dripping saliva. I have a sweet tooth myself, and holding noth ing against the son of such a cross-grained brute of a parent, I tossed him up three slabs of honey -comb, each about the size of a home-made pumpkin pie. A little later his joyful, honey- ' smeared countenance reappeared over the cliff. But this tune he found me busy. I was working out a deep design against his mother. Below the sharply slanting cliff, along which the bears for gener ations had worked their way to the cave, the cliff cut inward, leaving a sheer descent of nearly a hundred feet into one of the tank-line pools of Pitt River. With dark intentions against Mother Bruin's footing, I tossed her a piece of honeycomb, as I thought well beyond her reach. But instead of making a head long dive for it, as I hoped, she carefully readjusted her footing, and reaching far over with her paw, hooked in the dainty morsel, and devoured it with great gusto. I threw her another piece some what farther from her, but this, she decided, after several cau tious trials, was not worth the candle. It was one of the pranks of my thoughtless boyhood to poke old Tige's bone with a long stick, and laugh to see the faithful, friendly old fellow bristle and snarl like a mad hyena. Reflecting that the untutored and violent grizzly might likewise forget herself, I threw a chunck of comb within easy reach of her and prodded it with the bar. I hope never again to witness such an overboiling of malignity, at any rate, not at such close range. The brute's demonstra tion left me with a shaky feeling about the knees and no desire for further experimentation. It in stantly occured to me, however, that I was treed, to all intents and purposes, and that after my smudge rags gave oui-eie bees would auestion mv intuuC mc$3in.0 3CSS3r Doarder. ' ; This thought revived my cour age. I tossed a generous slab of honeycomb on top of the piece she had considered not worth the candle, and with uplifted bar and taunting shout, made as if to drive her back. For a moment she stood dodging at my feints and snarling terribly; then, with blazing eyes fixed on the morsel, she dared too far, her front feet slipped, and over she went. I had always thought that bears had the faculty of landing on their feet like a cat, and maybe they do; but thi3 bear hit the water fiat on her back, making a hole in the river that would have held a small cabin. For a man it would have been a halfday's journey from the spot where she landed and disappear ed in the brush to where the cub was at the top of the cliff. But fearing that the mother grizzly would return by some short cut, I delayed my departue only long enough to fill one of my buckets with honey. Abandoning all the rest of my outfit, I clambered up to the top tf the cliff, said good by to the cub, and set off for camp in a swinging trot. Youths Camanion. Written across Calvary is sacri fice; written across this age of ours is pleasure. On the lips of Christ are the stern words, I must obey. And it is when I think of the passion to be rich and the judgment of everything by money-standard; of the feverish de sire at all costs to be happy, of the frivolity, of the worship of I success it is when I think of that, and then contrast it with the "pale and solemn scene" up on the hill that I know the of fence of Calvary is not ceased. G. H. Morrison. ISyrup rerom- mended by mothers for r young ana old is prompt relief for coughs, colds, croup, hoarseness, whooping cough. Gently laxative and p!eaant to take. plea Gunran- teed hold Should be kept in every hu He- "Soli by J. W. Mcpherwn ndCo Why lh PopU Lev Bryan. News and Observer. How the anti-Bryan forces at Denver do juggle with the facts. Here just yesterday in their col umn of States that would vote a gainst Bryan if it came to the scratch were 21 votes of North Carolina. Such figuring as this shows that the bottom has drop ped out of the "allies" campaign against Mr. Bryan, for if the other States relied upon to vote against him are as certain to vote for him as North Carolina, then there is a genuine "it is to laugh" fight against him. The truth is that there has never been a day since he pres en t campaign began that there has been any other man in the Democratic party except Mr. Bryan who has had the ear of the voters. 'And that he has had this is remarkable only when viewed from one standpoint, and that is that he is a twice de feated candidate. Outside of that he has everything in his fa vor, and so greatly in his favor that the people expect to see him in the White House on the fourth of next March. Mr. Bryan's strong hold upon the confidence of the people i3 that he is trusted by them, for they have learned that he is no trimmer, that he is not a politi cian simply swept along by the tide, but that he is a man of de termined purpose, and that when he sees that a thing is right and for the the people's good he will j speak out in behalf of it. He is the champion of manhood all the time, and notonefor camgaign pnrw t..- ' " 1 ' m ' jet'XJ X j a.jr ... ... 0. v . ..,.Vy - but because he objects to 1. fen devouring the substance of the poor in order that they fatten and revel in luxury. He is the foe of special privi leges because he recognizes that the growth of the nation, and that while for a time they may seem of benefit they will in the end bring destruction. He is op posed to the aggressiveness of combined capital only when it is in such combinations that its suc cess means that the masses are preyed upon, and that even the liberty of the country is in dan ger as these grow swollen from ill gotten gains, and for all these things the people love him. And they love him because he is a fighter for the best; a clean, square, straight man, who does not hesitate to fight wrong and injustice wherever he finds it and under whatsoever name. In the forefront of conflicts with ag grandized wealth he would have been politically slaughtered years ago if the way to do it could have been found by those whom he opposed, but they have found no broken links in his ar mor through which to send the barb. His life has been examin ed and scrutinized with the most powerful magnifying glasses un der the brightest of search lights but nowhere has there been found a blemish. His personal integrity is unquestioned and driven back from point to point his opponents are always forced to say, "Bryan is an honest man." And that sums up the reasons PIGS. I have a fine lot of pigs ready to ship. More - than fifty to select from. in the lot. Order at ence JOHN why the people love Bryan and why they are going to nominate him and elect him. A wise man, a man of matured mind, a states man, a Christian, a lover of home, of State, of Nation, the advocate of the people, an honest man, he is entitled to the love and allegiance which is given to him, and these are the things which endear him to all who would see the people protected from the assaults of those who look upon them merely as so many pawns to be moved here and there that wealth and power may come to those whose only desire is to be great, no matter how the greatness is attained. Standing for the whole people, worthy of every confidence due an honest man, equipped for the duties of the Chief Executive of the Nation, he is due the votes of all who desire to see this country go forward on the best lines of development, that it may attain to that high destiny for which God has allowed it to be established. Vice President Kern. "Who is Kern?" is the ques tion which formed itself on all lips yesterday afternoon when the bulletine went on the board announcing that he had been nominated, and which wa3 pass ed around from one to another all evening. And nobody was able to answer. John Worth Kern, as is learned by reference to that unfailing mine of wealth, "Who's Who In America," is a lawyer of Indianapolis, was born in Howard county, Ind., Decem-T-StK 1?49. and is therefore in iver&ity T kiu.ian sna ,n reporter of the Supreme Court of Ir diana State Senator and city attorney of Indianopolis. He was the Democratic candidate for Govern nor in 1900 and 1904 but was un successful both years, and re ceived the complimentary vote of his party for the United States Senate in 1905. It is thus seen that while not a national figure he is a man of consequence in his own State. Why was he nominated? Our Denver special intimates strongly that all ex cept he and one or two others had run away from the nomina tion. That was one reason and another was for the strength he could bring to the ticket in Indi ana. Having failed twice to carry the State it is reasoned that he can carry it this year; a3 it is perhaps reasoned that be cause Mr. Bryan was defeated in 1896 and 1900 he will be elect ed in 1908. Such is the logic of politics sometimes. Charlotte Observer. This is what Hon. Jake Moore, State Warden of Georgia, Bays of Kodol For Dyspepsia: "E. C. DeWitt & Co., Chicago. 111. Dear Sirs 1 have suffer ed more than twenty years from indi gestion. About eighteen months ago I hud grown no much worse that I could not digest a crust of corn bread and could not retain anything on my Btorn arh. I lost 25 lbs; in fm't I made up mind that I could not live but a short time, when a friend of m.ne recom mended KodoL I consented to try it to please him and was better in one day . 1 now weigh more than I evt r did in my life and am in hotter health than for many years. Kodol did it. I keep a bottle constantly, and write this hoping tiiat humanity may be benefitted. Yours very truly, Jake C. Moore, At lanta, Aug. 10, 1904." Sold by J. II. Gwyn. I always ship best . pigs y and get choice. A. YOUNG, Greensboro, N. C.
The Mount Airy News (Mount Airy, N.C.)
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July 16, 1908, edition 1
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