Note 368 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 2)

“For Beares they be common, being a great black kind of Beare, which be most fierce in Strawberry time, at which time they have young ones; at this time likewise they will goe upright like a man, and clime trees, and swim to the Islands: which if the Indians see, there will be more sportful Beare bayting than Paris Garden can afford. For seeing the Beares take water, an Indian will leape after him, where they goe to water cuffes for bloody noses, and scratched sides; in the end the man gets the victory, riding the Beare over the watery plaine till he can beare him no longer.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 17.) “He makes his Denn amongst thick Bushes, thrusting in here and there store of moss, which being covered with snow and melting in the daytime with heat of the Sun, in the night is frozen into a thick coat of Ice; the mouth of his Den is very narrow, here they lye single, never two in a Den all winter. The Indian as soon as he finds them, creeps in upon all four, seizes with his left hand upon the neck of the sleeping Bear, drags him to the mouth of the Den, where with a club or small hatchet in his right hand he knocks out his brains before he can open his eyes to see his enemy.” (Two Voyages, p. 91.) Wood adds that bear’s flesh was “accounted very good meete, esteemed of all men above Venison.” Clayton says that “their flesh is commended for a very rich sort of Pork.” (Virginia, III. Force’s Tracts No. 12, p. 37.) “Beares there be manie towardes the sea-coast, which the Indians hunt most greedily; for indeed they love them above all other their flesh, and therefore hardly sell any of them unto us, unles upon large proffers of copper, beads and hatchetts. We have eaten of them, and they are very toothsome sweet venison, as good to be eaten as the flesh of a calfe of two yeares old; howbeit they are very little in comparison of those of Muscovia and Tartaria.” (Strachey’s Historie, p. 123.) See, also, Josselyn’s New England’s Rarities, pp. 13-14, and Two Voyages, pp. 91-2.