While the gold-fever is not just at present epidemic, the prospector is still abroad in many a gulch and canyon and torrent's mouth in the heart of the treasure-bearing Rockies. The adventurous spirit finds an intense fascination in these wild, lowly mountains, which continually offer the chance of discovering a vein of yellow-flecked quartz, precious silver ore, by some lucky stroke of the pickax. By such hazard, the riches of the Black Hills were revealed; and so, too, sprung the fallacious hopes which brought an eager crowd, as if by magic, to the far, almost inaccessible fastnesses of Coeur d'Alene.

In such a life, danger and romance are closely mingled. It is not yet entirely safe to invade the old hunting-grounds of the Indian; and that other terror of the Rocky Mountains, the grizzly bear, is by no means extinct. Dramas of action more thrilling than ever get into the conventional "bear story” performed without spectators, when the path of the prospector chances unexpectedly cross that of the formidable Ursus feror, the true monarch of the foothills. A steady hand glides backward with instinctive promptness, and grasps the ever-ready revolver, forefinger on trigger. The chances are that Bruin will not succumb to pistol-balls, however well-aimed; and a desperate hand-to-hand conflict, with bowie-knife and claws, has to be fought out before the grizzle—or the man is finished. Anyone who has looked upon the truly grisly form and three-inch claws of this monster will feel the excitement of the situation which the artist has graphically represented.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, February 13, 1886.