“In a little while I saw the bear climbing up a large black oak tree, and I crawled on till I got within about eighty yards of him. He was setting with his breast to me, and so I put fresh priming in my gun and fired at him. At this he raised one of his paws and snorted loudly. I loaded again as quick as I could, and fired as near the same place in his breast as possible. At the crack of my gun, here he came tumbling down; and the moment he touched the ground I heard one of my best dogs cry out. I took my tomahawk in one hand and my big butcher-knife in the other, and ran up within four or five paces of him, at which he let my dog go and fixed his eyes on me. I got back in all sorts of a hurry, for I knowed that if he got hold of me, he would hug me altogether too close for comfort. I went to my gun and hastily loaded her again, and shot him a third time, which killed him for good. “I now began to think about getting him home, but I didn’t know how far it was. So I left him and started; and in order to find him again, I would blaze a sapling every little distance, which would show me the way back; I continued this until I got within a mile of home, for there I knowed very well where I was, and that I could easily find my way back to my blazes. When I got home, I took my brother-in-law and my young man and four horses, and went back. We got there just before dark, and struck up a fire and commenced butchering my bear. It was some time in the night before we finished it; and I can assert, on my honor, that I believe he would have weighed six hundred pounds. It was the second largest I ever saw. I killed one, a few years afterwards, that weighed six hundred and seventeen pounds. “I now felt fully compensated for my sufferings in going after my powder; and well satisfied that a dog may be doing a good business, _even when he seems to be barking up the wrong tree_.” The bear referred to as weighing six hundred pounds was a fine specimen of the black bear of the East, but the white bears of Alaska are nearly twice as large. In 1909, near the western extremity of the Alaskan Peninsula, a white bear was killed by Dr. J. Wylie Anderson, of Denver, and Mr. Hornaday, the celebrated zoölogist, estimated its weight at twelve hundred pounds. In the month of February, 1823, Davy went to Jackson, carrying a great quantity of skins to sell. Jackson was then a little cross-roads settlement, the county seat of Madison County, and about forty miles from Davy’s clearing. He was there only twenty-four hours before the skins were sold, and supplies of sugar, coffee, salt, powder, and lead were bought and packed in readiness for an early start for home the next day.