AN OLD-TIME BEAR-STORY.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 123, 14 June 1876, Page 2

AN OLD-TIME BEAR-STORY.

The “ Bennington Banner” reprints from an old paper a communication from that town dated December 25, 1717, which. quaintly tells this story i “A very odd kind of a providence happened lately in onr neighborhood, viz: Mr Zebulon, a farmer living about five miles north-east by north of this township, having trained up a couple of large boars to the plow and other services,- ; clapped them to the sled last week with twenty schipplcs of wheat for the new city. The animals drew extremely well for four miles and a half, when the halter of the near bear giving way, the farmer set about replacing it; but while he was thus employed, the brute seizing him by the right leg, tore it dreadfully, and both bears hauling at once, ran away with the sled, so that with the utmost difficulty he got homo in four hours on foot. Messengers were despatched, to look for the sled and cargo, and two days-being spent in fruitless search, they were given up for lost: but on the third, at noon, the noise of a team near the house was heard, and young Gad Stanhope jumped up lo s< e who was coming, when behold, to his gr at astonishment, it proved lo be the two bears drawing the sled into the barn, with no earthly load in it except four large bears and three cubs. The lad and two men that then happened to be. in the house, ran nimbly and shutting the bam door, with a long gun I shot them all through a crevice.