BEAR WITH SPECTACLES. 121

quite a habit of stopping and looking at
you through his queer spectacles as long
as you are in sight. He looks to be a sort
of second-hand bear, his shaggy, faded,
dirty coat of hair looking as if he had been
stuffed, like an old sofa, with the stuffing
coming out—a very second-hand appear-
ance, to be sure.

Now, as I have always had a fondness
for skins—having slept on them and under
them all my life, making both bed and car-
pet of them—I very much wanted a skin
of this queer marsh bear which the poor
negroes both adore and dread as a sort of
devil. But, as no one liked him well enough
to kill him, I must do it myself; and with
this object, along with my duty to describe
the drowning plantations, I left New Or-
leans with Colonel Bloom, two good guns,
and something to eat and to drink, and
swept down the great river to the landing
in the outer edge of the timber belt.

And how strange this landing! As a
rule you have to climb up to the shore from