The man walked almost over a bear while crossing a little point of brush, in a bend of the river, and was brained with a single blow of the paw.

In another instance which came to my knowledge the man escaped with a shaking up, and without even a fight.

His name was Perkins, and he was out gathering huckleberries in the woods on a mountain side near Pend'Oreille Lake.

Suddenly he was sent flying head over heels, by a blow which completely knocked the breath out of his body; and so instantaneous was the whole affair that all he could ever recollect about it was getting a vague glimpse of the bear just as he was bowled over.

When he came to he found himself lying some distance down the hill-side, much shaken, and without his berry pail, which had rolled a hundred yards below him, but not otherwise the worse for his misadventure; while the footprints showed that the bear, after delivering the single hurried stoke at the unwitting disturber of its day-dreams, had run off up-hill as fast as it was able.
A she-bear with cubs is a proverbially dangerous beast; yet even under such conditions different grislies act in directly opposite ways.