Part 10 (1/2)

Another fury on his back!”

--_Bishop_.

We could hear them yelp, yelp, yelp, while they were on the tracks and heard them when they came up to the bears. Then there was a wonderful confusion of voices. We could hear our dogs and they seemed to be struggling hard for their lives. ”Bow-wow, bow, bowwow, yelp, yelp, yelp, tii, tii, tii.”

When the dogs got to the bears we were about half a mile from them. We hurried through the brush and over the logs, as fast as possible, to help our canine friends for we supposed that they were in a life and death struggle. It is now my opinion that there never was such a noise and conflict in those woods before, nor since, at least heard by white men.

When we were about half way to where the battle raged most furiously, it was all at once still; we could not hear a sound from them any more. We went a little farther and met old Watch, and some of the other dogs crawling back. Watch, by his wounds, gave a good report of his courage himself. He was bleeding; had been wounded and torn badly. He was hurt the worst of any of the dogs. Before we reached the battle ground we met the last one; he was not hurt at all, he had kept a proper distance. But they were all badly whipped or scared. They had got enough of the bears.

”Sir Bruin to his forest flew, With heart as light as paws were fleet; Nor further dare the curs pursue, It was a 'masterly retreat.'”

--_Bishop._

When we got to the battle ground we could see where they had fought, clenched and rolled over and over. The blood of the dogs was sprinkled all around on the snow. We saw that it was the large bears which did the fighting. They would not leave the small ones but fought for them. We saw in one place, where the fight was the most severe, one bear had attempted to climb a tree. He went up a piece on one side of it and down the other, then jumped off, before we got in sight, and ran. We could see by the marks of the claws, on the bark of the tree, and the tracks, where he jumped oft, that he had climbed part way up.

I have seen hundreds of times in the woods where bears had reached up as high as they could around little trees and scratched them. It showed the plainest on beech trees as their bark is smooth. It is easy to see the size of the bear's paws and his length from the ground by these marks on the trees.

That day we saw where the bears had done some marking of dogs as well as trees. We found that the dogs had separated the bears, some having gone one way and some another. The grit had been taken out of us as well as out of the dogs, and the bear hunt had lost its charms for us. We were a long ways from home and we thought it best to get our wounded dogs back there again, if we could. We gave up the chase and let those bears go. I felt the effects of the previous day's chase and tired out more easily; I wished I had let the Indian have the bears to do what he was a mind to with, and that I had never seen them.

I presume there are now many persons in Wayne County, who little think that thirty-three years ago, 1842, there could have been four wild bears followed, in different towns in that county, for two days; yet such was the case. This was about the last of my hunting. My attention was called to other business, of more importance which I thought it was necessary for me to attend to, so I hung up my rifle and have not used it to hunt with, in the woods, six full days since. That Indian, who wanted the bears, was the last Indian I ever saw in the woods hunting for a living.

I don't think there is a wild deer in the town of Dearborn at this day and but very few, if any, in Wayne County. I heard that there was one bear killed by a man, near the mouth of the Ecorse, last fall, 1874. He was a stranger and, no doubt, far from his native home. He was the first one I have heard of being seen in this country for years.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GRANDFATHER'S POWDER-HORN--WAR WITH PIRATES.

Time sped on. The earth had traveled its circuit many times since father sold his little place in Putnam County, State of New York, and bade adieu to all the dear scenes of his childhood and youth and came to battle, for himself and family in the wilds of Michigan. And he did his part bravely.

He was a strong man; mentally and physically strong, and possessed just enough of the love of a romantic and strange life, to help him battle successfully with the incidents and privations common to such as settle in a new country, with but little capital. He worked his way through. He had a very retentive memory and possessed the faculty of pleasing his visitors, to no common extent.

Father at the close of the Tripoli war, 1805, was about the age that I was when we started for Michigan. He often told me of the war with Tripoli and trouble with Algiers. He gloried in the name of an American and often related the prowess and bravery of our soldiers, in defending their flag and the rights of American citizens, at home and abroad, on the land and on the sea.

Of course when the Fourth of July came round I went to celebrate the day.

As cannon were almost always fired at Dearbornville, on that day, I would go out there to listen to the big guns and their tremendous roar, as they were fired every minute for a national salute. The sound of their booming died away beyond Detroit River, in Canada, and let the Canadians, and all others in this part of the universe, know that we were holding the Fourth of July in Dearbornville. When I went home at night I told father about it, and what a good time I had enjoyed, and that they fired one big gun in honor of Michigan.

On such days his patriotic feelings were wrought up and he talked much of wars, patriotism and so forth. On such an occasion he told me that his father, William Nowlin, was a captain of militia, in the State of New York, when he was a boy. That I was named for him and that, when he was done with it, I should have my grandfather's ancient powder-horn. It is red and carved out very nicely, covered with beautiful scrolls and old-fas.h.i.+oned letters. The two first letters of my grandfather's name, W.

N., are on it, and toward the smaller end of the horn--my father's given name, John. These were inscribed on it long since the horn was made. It was made when Was.h.i.+ngton was about twenty-five years old, and, no doubt, saw service in the French and Indian war, in the defence of the English colonies of America. Its history, some of it, is shrouded in mystery. It has pa.s.sed down through the revolutionary war, and the war of 1812, through four generations of men, and was given to me by my father as an heir-loom, a relic of the past.

Next to my father's given name is the inscription, E.b. Then follows these old lines:

”I, powder, with my brother ball, A hero like, do conquer all.”

”'Tis best abroad with foreign foes to fight, And not at home, to feel their hateful spite, Where all our friends of every s.e.x and age, Will be expos'd unto their cruel rage.”

--Lieut. Abl Prindel's. Made at No. 4. June 30th, 1757.

The letters are old fas.h.i.+oned, the ”s” on it is made as an ”f” is made now. I presume it was a present from Lieut. Prindel to grandfather. This horn is sixteen inches long, measures nine and one-half inches around the b.u.t.t and would hold fully four pounds of powder.

Father said in the war with Tripoli, 1803, one of the Barbary States, Captain Bainbridge sailed, in the Philadelphia, to Tripoli and chased one of the pirate boats into the harbor. He ventured a little too far and ran aground. The officers were made prisoners and the crew slaves, to the Turks, and joined their countrymen who had preceded them. But, father said, the Americans were too brave a people to be subjected to slavery.

Other Americans rescued them and it was proved that the United States would protect their flag throughout all the world. He often told me of Commodore Decatur and William Eaton. They were among his ideal American heroes. He said that Decatur conceived the idea of retaking the ”Philadelphia” and destroying her. He sailed into the harbor of Tripoli at night and up to the ”Philadelphia,” made his vessel, the ”Intrepid,”