"Gardezvous, gardezvous, Monsieur, elle fonce
encore!" (Take care, take care, Sir, she is after
us again!) and on she rushed. I had barely
time to put on my copper cap as she rose on
her hind legs; I fired, and sent my bullet
through her heart. She doubled up, and
rolled to the bottom of the slope; but we did
not venture to approach until we had
ascertained she was dead by pelting her with
sticks and stumps. After this Dauphin,
with a stick and a coil of rope, set out to
catch the young sucking bears, but they
fought so hard that he was obliged to kill
one, and the other bit and scratched so that
the old hunter was glad to let him go."

Mr. Palliser was not content until he had
shot three more of these grisly monsters, of
the largest of which he says, with his usual
candour, "He rose up displaying such gigantic
proportions as almost made my heart fail
me. I croaked again like a bull calf: he came
cantering up slowly. I felt I was in for it, and
that escape was impossible, so cocking both
barrels of my firelock I remained kneeling
until he approached very near, when I suddenly
stood up; upon which the bear with an
indolent roaring grunt raised himself once
more upon his hind legs. Just as he was
balancing before springing on me, I fired,
aiming close under his chin; the ball passing
through his throat, broke the vertebræ of the
neck, and down he tumbled floundering like
a great fish out of water, until at length he
reluctantly expired. I drew a long breath,
and felt right glad at the successful issue of
the combat."

And here we may as well end the hunting
adventures, of which we have given only a
few. Many amusing and pleasing traits
of the character of the author are unconsciously
scattered through the narrative.
The self-possessed manner in which, at New
Orleans, having forgotten the name and street
of his hotel, and, having wandered into a house
by mistake, he receives a candle through a
narrowly-opened door from a white jewelled
hand, and retires, to be awakened the next
morning by an offer of ivory-backed
hairbrushes from a lady who turns out to be the
wife of a friend—such is the hospitality of
New Orleans—is delightful. So is the ball at
St. Louis, where he rushed into a kitchen,
and made pretty Madame Zoller leave the
cooking, and come up and dance the Sturm
Marsch Gallop with a pair of shoes that kept
continually coming off.

If he has the toothache and cannot eat
venison, he goes down and kills a buffalo bull,
and feasts off his marrow bones. Then he
will catch alligators at Cairo; and finally
embarks for England with a menagerie of one
black bear, two bisons, two bison calves, a
deer, and antelope, after being indebted to
the bear for defending his chum, the antelope,
against the attacks of a great mastiff in the
streets of New Orleans.

And so we take leave of John Palliser—
a good sportsman; who does not gloat over
his victims with half savage exultation.

THE STOP THE WAY COMPANY.

TO the lovers of antiquarian lore—that
peculiar race of philosophers who look upon
Gog and Magog as intimately bound up with
the welfare of Great Britain;—to such as
consider the turning up of some antediluvian
monster as of far more value than any discovery
of modern science; it may be matter
for congratulation and pleasure to know that
there is a broad region of this globe, which
has not only been standing still while all
the rest of the world has been whirling
round, busy with human thought and human
progress, but has been actually in many
respects retrograding.

The middle-age student may rub his parchment
hands at the idea of a territory equal
in extent to the whole of continental Europe,
watered by some of the finest rivers in the
world, blessed by a health-giving climate,
abounding in mineral wealth, possessing
many thousands of miles of fruitful soil, which
is still in the very self-same barbarous,
unsophisticated condition as it was in the time of
Charles the Second; defiant of the ruthless
innovations of science and art, stopping the
way for labour and capital, and presenting
at every entrance, by rivers, by bays, by
highways, by by-ways, one enormous, unrelenting
notice of NO THOROUGHFARE.

It is not an idle fairy tale for Christmas,
but a stern reality. No truant schoolboy,
in search of apples or birds' nests, was ever
scared more effectually by the ominous black
board with its "steel traps and spring guns,"
than have been the pioneers of civilisation,
by the great No Thoroughfare monopoly, the
Hudson's Bay Company.

Some people may openly profess scepticism
as to the existence of such a Company, and
look upon it as a sort of incorporated Mrs.
Harris. Who ever heard of its annual meetings?
Did any one ever see its shares advertised
for sale, or quoted in any share list?
Has it transfer days, and open days, and shut
days? Did it ever make a call; or, if it
ever did, when was the last call answered?
Has anybody, by chance, stumbled upon a Hudson's
Bay Director, or Chairman, or Deputy
Chairman? Does any letter carrier or policeman
know where the Hudson's Bay House
is? It must be somewhere, and must have
clerks, and messengers, and office-keepers,
and ledgers, and day-books, and (perhaps)
transfer books, and no doubt it takes in the
Public Ledger. But where? The abstract
Company. All actually exists, and has existed
since the reign of Charles the Second;
who, as some chronicles rather unkindly
relate, having been sadly pressed for money
to meet some heavy bills falling due, made
over certain territories in North America to