ars, so that when she stopped licking me, I, knowing what was coming
next, would tuck my head down as far as it would go between my legs, and
keep it there till she began licking again.

Yes, when I stop to think, I know, from many things, that I must have
been just an ordinary cub. For instance, my very earliest recollection
is of tumbling downhill.

Like all bears, I was born and lived on the hillside. In the Rocky
Mountains, where my home was, there is nothing but hills, or mountains,
for miles and miles, so that you can wander on for day after day, always
going up one side of a hill and down the other, and up and down again;
and at the bottom of almost every valley there is a stream or river,
which for most of the year swirls along nosily and full of water.

In the winter the whole country is covered with snow many feet deep,
which, as it falls, slides off the hillsides, and is drifted by the
winds into the valleys and hollows till the smaller ones are filled up
nearly to the tops of the trees. But bears do not see much of that, for
when the first snow comes we get into our dens and go half asleep, and
stay hibernating till springtime. And you have no idea how delightful
hibernating is, nor how excruciatingly stiff we are when we wake up, and
how hungry!

The snow lies over everything for months, until in the early spring the
warm west winds begin to blow, melting the snow from one side of the
mountains. Then the sun grows hotter and hotter day by day, and helps to
melt it until most of the mountain slopes are clear; but in sheltered
places and in the bottoms of the little hollows the snow stays in
patches till far into the summer. We bears comes out from our winter
sleep when the snow is not quite gone, when the whole earth everywhere
is still wet with it, and the streams, swollen with floods, are
bubbling and boiling along so that the air is filled with the noise of
them by night and day.

Our home was well up one of the hillsides, where two huge cedar-trees
shot up side by side close by a jutting mass of rock. In between the
roots of the trees and under the rock was as good a house as a family of
bears could want--roomy enough for all four of us, perfectly sheltered,
and hidden and dry. Can you imagine how warm and comfy it was when we
were all snuggled in there, with our arms round each other, and our
faces buried in each other's fur? Anyone looking in would have seen
nothing but a huge ball of brown fluff.