“He went off to his little cabin, which was a short distance in the brush, and his wife was very anxious he should go with me. So we started and went to the place where I had killed my three bears, and made a camp. Night now came on, but no word from my dogs yet. I afterwards found that they had treed the bear they had gone after, about five miles off, near a man’s house, and had barked at it the whole enduring night. Poor fellows! Many a time they looked for me, and wondered why I didn’t come, for they know’d there was no mistake in me, and I know’d they were as good as ever fluttered in the breeze. As soon as it was light enough to see, the man took his gun and went to them, and shot the bear and killed it. My dogs, however, wouldn’t have anything to do with this stranger; so they left him, and came back early in the morning to me. “We got our breakfast and cut out again, and we killed four large and very fat bears that day. We hunted out the week, and in that time we killed seventeen, all of them first rate. When we closed our hunt, I gave the man over a thousand weight of fine, fat bear-meat, which pleased him mightily, and made him feel rich. I saw him the next fall, and he told me he had plenty of meat to do him the whole year from his week’s hunt. My son and me now went home. This was the week between Christmas and New Year that we made this hunt. “When we got home, one of my neighbors was out of meat, and wanted me to go back, and let him go with me, to take another hunt. I couldn’t refuse, but told him I was afraid the bears had taken to house by that time, for after they get very fat, in the fall and early part of the winter, they go into their holes, in large hollow trees or into hollow logs, or their cane house, or the harricanes, and lie there till spring, like frozen snakes. And one thing about this will seem mighty strange to many people. From about the first of January till about the last of April, these varments lie in their holes altogether. “In all that time they have no food to eat; and when they come out they are not an ounce lighter than when they went to house. I don’t know the cause of this, and still I know it is a fact; and I leave it to others who have more learning than I have, to account for it.” (The bears might be suspected of having learned and practised the secrets of the Norwegian stove, or the modern fireless cooker, whereby a little heat is made to last for many hours.) “They have not a particle of food with them, but they just lie and suck the bottoms of their paws all the time. I have killed many of them in their trees, which enables me to speak positively upon the subject.