“Oh,” said the other, “if you say it was so, I suppose it’s all right; you ought to know best. But I warn’t laafin’ at you; I was laafin’ at the bar.” “What do you know about bars?” said the hunter, “Did you ever kill a bar?” The poor fellow had never killed a “bar,” so the hunter snuffed him out with a look of utter contempt and pity, and went on triumphantly with his story, which ended in his getting up a tree, where he sat and peppered the bear as it went smelling round the stump, till it at last fell mortally wounded, with I don’t know how many balls in its body. The grizzlies are the commonest kind of bear found in California, and are very large animals, weighing sometimes sixteen or eighteen hundred pounds.[3] Hunting them is rather dangerous sport, as they are extremely tenacious of life, and when wounded invariably show fight. But unless molested they do not often attack a man; in fact, they are hardly ever seen on the trails during the day. At night, however, they prowl about, and carry off whatever comes in their way. They had walked off with a young calf from this ranch the night before, and the hunter was going out the next day to wreak his vengeance upon them. A grizzly is well worth killing, as he fetches a hundred dollars or more, according to his weight. The meat is excellent, but it needs to be well spiced, for in process of cooking it becomes saturated with bear’s grease. In the mines, however, pomatum is an article unknown, and so no unpleasantly greasy ideas occur to one while dining off a good piece of grizzly bear. About ten o’clock, at the conclusion of a bear story, there was a general move towards one corner of the cabin where there were a lot of rifles, and where every man had thrown his roll of blankets. The floor was swept, and each one, choosing his own location, spread his blankets and lay down. Some slept in their boots, while others took them off, to put under their heads by way of pillows. I was one of the latter number, being rather partial to pillows; and selecting a spot for my head, where it would be as far from other heads as possible, I lay down, and stretching out my feet promiscuously, I was very soon in the land of dreams, where I went through the whole Mexican campaign, and killed more “bars” than ever the hunter had seen in his life. People do not lie abed in the morning in California; perhaps they would not anywhere, if they had no better beds than we had; so before daylight there was a general resurrection, and a very general ablution was performed in a tin basin which stood on a keg outside the cabin, alongside of which was a barrel of water. Over the basin hung a very small looking-glass, in which one could see one eye at a time; and attached to it by a long string was a comb for the use of those gentlemen who did not travel with their dressing-cases.