Captain Clarke agrees with La Hontan in ascribing fierceness of disposition to the brown bear, and also speaks of it as "reddish," or of a bay brown. "We had rather," says Captain Clarke, "encounter two Indians than meet a single brown bear; their very track in the mud or sand, which we have sometimes found 11 inches long and 7-1/4 wide, exclusive of the talons, is alarming. The wonderful power of life which they possess renders them dreadful: there is no chance of killing them by a single shot, unless the ball goes through the brain." ... Six of Captain Clarke's party, all good hunters, having sight of a large one of the brown breed, came unperceived within forty paces of him; four of them then fired, and each lodged a ball in his body, two of which went directly through the lungs. The brave beast made at them instantly; as he came near, the two men who had reserved their shot both wounded him; one of the balls broke his shoulder, and retarded his motion for a moment; before they could reload, he was so near that they all ran to the river; two jumped into the canoe, the other four separated, hid themselves among the willows, and, firing as fast as they could reload, struck him repeatedly, but every shot seemed as if it only served to guide him, and he pursued two of them so closely that at last they threw aside their guns and pouches, and jumped down a perpendicular bank of twenty feet into the water. Even this did not secure them; Bruin sprang after them, and was within a few feet of the hindermost, when one of the hunters from the shore shot him in the head. It was found that eight balls had passed through him. Another brown bear, after being shot five times through the lungs, and receiving four other wounds, swam half across the river to a sand-bar. This creature measured 8 feet 7-1/2 inches from the nose to the extremity of the hind feet, and his heart was as big as that of a large ox, his maw ten times larger. Another, having been shot through the middle of the lungs, pursued his enemy for half a mile, than traveled more than a mile in another direction, and dug, as if for his grave, a hole for himself in the earth two feet deep and five feet long, in which he was found by the hunters. The skin of this beast was a burden for two men.--Captain Lewis and Clarke's _Travels to the Source of the Missouri River_. [Footnote 226: Bear's flesh is reckoned one of the greatest rarities among the Chinese, insomuch that, as Du Halde informs us, the emperor will send fifty or a hundred leagues into Tartary to procure it for a great entertainment.] No. XXXV.