erally so tired and so bewildered that they
fell an easy prey to the pumas and wolves. All night long the forest was
full of the yelping of the coyotes revelling over the bodies of animals
that the larger beasts had killed and only partly eaten, and every
creature seemed to be quarrelling with those of its kind, the former
inhabitants of the neighborhood resenting the intrusion of the
newcomers. For ourselves, nobody attacked us. We found two other
families of bears quite close to us, but though we did not make friends
at first, they did not quarrel with us. We were glad enough to live in
peace, and to be able to devote ourselves to learning something about
the new country.

In general it was very much like the place that we had left--the same
succession of mountain after mountain, all densely covered with trees,
and with the streams winding down through gulch and valley. The stream
that we had followed was now a river, broader all along its course than
the beavers' pool which had saved our lives, and at one place, about two
miles beyond the end of the burned region, it passed through a valley,
wider than any that I had seen, with an expanse of level land on either
side. Here it was, on this level bottom-land, that I first tasted what
are, I think, next to honey, of all wild things the greatest treat that
a bear knows--ripe blueberries. But this "berry-path," as we called it,
was to play a very important part in my life, and I must explain.

We had soon learned that we were now almost in the middle of men. There
was the party which had passed us going up the stream into the burned
country. There were two more log-houses about a mile from the edge of
the burned country, and therefore also behind us. There were others
farther down the stream, and almost every day men passed either up or
down the river, going from one set of houses to another. Finally we
heard, and, before we had been there a week, saw with our own eyes, that
only some ten miles farther on, where our stream joined another and made
a mighty river, there was a town, which had all sprung up since last
winter, in which hundreds of men lived together. This was the great
draw-back to our new home. But if we went farther on, the chances were
that we should only come to more and more men; and for the present, by
lying up most of the day, and only going out at night in the direction
of their houses, there was no difficulty in keeping away from them.

Familiarity