120 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

queer creatures are overrunning the region
down there, too, growing like weeds, in-
creasing as man decreases. I found a sort
of marsh bear here. He looks like the
sloth bear (Ursus Labiatus) of the Ganges,
India, as you see him in the Zoo of Lon-
don, only he is not a sloth, by any means.
The negroes are superstitiously afraid of
him, and their dogs, very numerous, and
good coon dogs, too, will not touch him.
His feet are large and flat, to accommo-
date him in getting over the soft ground,
while his shaggy and misshapen body is
very thin and light. His color is as un-
lovely as his shape—a sort of faded, dirty
brown or pale blue, with a rim of dirty
white about the eyes that makes him look
as if he wore spectacles when he stops and
looks at you.

As he is not fit to eat because he lives
on fish and oysters, sportsmen will not fire
at him; and as the poor, superstitious, voo-
doo-worshiping negroes, and their dogs,
too, run away as soon as he is seen, he has