But there was not much danger of a _St. Helene_, for Barnum was once more in his element, and he worked with all the verve he had formerly exhibited in the exploitation of Museum attractions. About one month after his renewed management began, he was visited by James C. Adams, known as “Grizzly” Adams, who had traveled from San Francisco by boat with his collection of California animals, consisting mostly of vicious bears. He had twenty grizzly bears, several wolves and buffaloes, California lions, tigers, and elk. One of his stars was “Old Neptune,” the great sea-lion of the Pacific. Most of these animals “Grizzly” Adams had captured himself during his long career as a hunter and trapper in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains. “Grizzly” Adams was as much a show as his beasts. He wore a hunter’s buckskin suit, trimmed with the tails of Rocky Mountain animals. For a cap he used a wolf’s head, trimmed with tails; his own stiff, bushy, gray hair grew long. His beard was white, long and grizzly, and after a voyage of three and a half months around Cape Horn with constant care and attention to his wild animals, who were trained to obey him but recognized no other master, “Grizzly” Adams was not natty when he presented himself to Barnum. During their conversation the hunter removed his hat out of deference to his prospective employer, and exposed the top of his skull, which was smashed in; he explained to Barnum that one of his pet bears, “General Frémont,” had laid open his master’s brain in a moment of playfulness. Barnum remarked anxiously that the wound looked dangerous. “Yes,” said Adams, “that will fix me out. It had nearly healed; but Old Frémont opened it for me the third or fourth time before I left California, and he did his business so thoroughly, I’m a used-up man. But I reckon I may live six months or a year yet.” Later he said: “Mr. Barnum, I am not the man I was five years ago. Then I felt able to stand the hug of any grizzly living, and was always glad to encounter, single-handed, any sort of an animal that dared present himself. But I have been beaten to a jelly, torn almost limb from limb, and nearly chawed up and spit out by these treacherous grizzly bears. But I am good for a few months yet, and by that time I hope we shall gain enough to make my old woman comfortable, for I have been absent from her some years.” [Illustration: CASTLE GARDEN IN 1850 From a contemporary color print] [Illustration: CHARITY BARNUM, P. T. BARNUM’S FIRST WIFE From 1888 edition of his Autobiography] [Illustration: JAMES ANTHONY BAILEY _Harvard Theatre Collection_ ]