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Philadelphia
Inquirer – Philadelphia Penn.
August
8, 1896
CHASED
BY A GRIZZLY – Exciting Adventure Which Befell a Hopeful Young
Prospector,
HIS
YELL CRACKED ROCKS – Partley Through Accident He Manages to Shoot the
Monster and Then he Finishes Him With a Hammer
Harry
L. Romaine, who has just returned to his home in Elk City, Idaho, after
spending several weeks prospecting in the Bitter Root Mountains, related
to a N.Y. Press man a most exciting adventure which befell him near
Murray, the county seat of Shoshone County.
“My
partner, Ben Williams and I had been working our way along the range
from a point near Big Bald Mountain to the loop where the Bitter Root
Range and the Couer d’Alenes form a big, natural amphitheater, where
big game, especially elk , are plentiful.
We decide to stay t here until we had time to follow up the lead,
as old miners say. We
pitched our camp under the shadow of a rock-ribbed sentinel, passing our
first night in the little tent which had served us splendidly during
several hard rains. That makes me think – if you want a tent to shed water,
immerse it in linseed oil in which “rosin” is melted.
On the following morning Ben found the track of a bear down by
the spring where we got our water.
The print of that foot was as big as a dinner plate, and the fact
that some empty salmon cans and other refuse which had been thrown just
outside the tent were missing set us to thinking, and it wasn’t
difficult to trace the connection between the missing articles and the
owner of the big foot.
Exploring
Trip
There
was no more tenting for yours truly after that, so we built us a sort of
stone fortress in a suitable nook, where nature had already done the
mason work on three sides. After
laying up the wall on the vacant side we placed heavy poles across the
top, on which we placed flat stones.
We
did all our prospecting together for a week or ten days, Ben carrying
his big Sharp’s special and acting as body-guard, while I handled the
pick. All that time we saw
no bears, but plenty of elk and antelope and not a few mountain sheep.
Our grizzly bear scare finally cooled.
One morning I decided to explore a side canyon.
Ben was to climb over the big spur that loomed up over our camp,
swing around and meet me at noon near a sharp cone of rock which we
called Currecanti Needle. I
found mighty likely pay rock up that ravine and the further I went the
better the showing. The
place is undoubtedly the site of an old volcano.
Great masses of rock from overhanging crags have fallen and rent
the floors, with some of the fissures very wide and apparently
bottomless. Knocking off a
piece of friable sand rock I found it to be auriferous, or gold-bearing
rock. I don’t know whether the yell I gave split any more cracks
in the rock round there or not, but one thing I do know, I nearly split
my throat in the effort, and then I mounted the big chunk and swung my
hammer like a madman, knocking off chips right and left until I had a
big pile.
Bruin
Appears
Soon
I head a noise close by, and supposing it to be Ben, I yelled out:
“Hurrah, Ben, I’ve struck it rich!”
Just then I looked up, and the sight I saw froze my blood.
Not forty feet distant was an immense silver-tip grizzly.
Acting
upon impulse, I hurled my quartz hammer at the monster, and as he
dropped on all-fours, I leaped from the rock, hoping to evade him by
dodging around the boulder. It
may have been a foolish move, but I had not time to think.
After jumping from the rock I was obliged to halt a moment, in
order to satisfy myself which way he was coming.
I improved the moment by drawing my 44 Colt from its sheath.
When
the bear reached the point where he expected to nab me and found that I
was not there, he gave vent to a tremendous sniff, followed by a kind of
guttural roar, and again I heard him coming at a double quick. I ran as I never ran before.
I
glanced hurriedly around and saw the gigantic fellow coming like a
demon, and then I stepped into one of the fissures I told you about, and
down I went like a flash. The
grizzly was so close on me when I fell that he went entirely over me,
carried by the force of his momentum.
He was back again in a moment, though.
His immense head hanging over the rim of my narrow prison, which
I quickly and most gratefully saw was too narrow to admit his bulky
body.
I
was on my knees, not six feet below the grizzly and I felt that I could
do deadly work with my revolver at that range.
I pointed the gun straight at the yawing red mouth. My pistol roared in my ears.
Five shots more were fired, as fast as I could send them, and
then my gun was empty, but, thanks to my lucky stars, one of my bullets
pierced an eye and the job was done.
I
was as weak as a baby when I climbed out of the fissure. I’d got all over it, though, when Ben came and I told him I
just knocked that grizzly on the head with my quartz hammer.
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