As Zernetz lay on my route, and as it was
raining hard when I got there, I felt I could
not do better than spend the day with Fili, who
keeps a very good inn—the Lion. Two or three
people were dining at a sort of table d'hôte
when I entered, and Fili was attending to their
orders as mildly and benevolently as if he had
never faced a bear in his life. He is a slight
but very muscular man, of middle height, with
a curious flat face of a yellow sun-burned hue,
which, together with a low pork-pie hat, gave him
quite a Chinese aspect. He has the keen wild
restless look about the eyes which is so
characteristic of the Alpine hunter, and wore the short
grey coatee with green facings, which is the
favourite German sporting costume. Having
been laid up with bronchitis, the doctor had
prohibited smoking, but he kept a long unlit
Tyrolese cigar in his mouth, through force of
habit. After dinner I had a long gossip with
him about the achievements which had made
him famous in the Engadine, and drawn to his
roof Russian princes and German counts, anxious
to have the honour of joining him in the chase.

Two months before I visited him, Fill had
shot a she bear and two cubs at twelve feet
distance, and despatched them in ten minutes. He
had been on their trail for some time, but came
upon them at the last suddenly. He fired at
the mother first, and was fortunate enough to
hit her in a vital part, or his position would
have been very dangerous, for a she bear is
terrible in the fury with which she defends her
young. "And, by-the-by," he added, "I dare
say you would like to taste a slice of my old
granny."The phrase was new to me, and had
a cannibal sound, so I said I had already dined
sufficiently. "Oh," replied Jacob, "one can
always eat grandfather or grandmother when
one has no appetite for anything else;" and he
hurried off, returning in a few minutes with a
plate of dry black meat. "That's a bit of
prime bear ham, such as you won't get every
day," he said; and my scruples being thus
removed, I fell to. The flesh had very much the
taste, as it had also the appearance, of hung
beef which had been smoked and not cured in
our English manner. I owned it very palatable.

"I'll tell you what," said the enthusiastic
Jacob, " it's heavenly meat when you get it at
the right time and in the right way. The paws
rolled in clay and baked in the embers are
delicious; but I never enjoyed old Sweetfoot so
much as once I did a slice from the inside of his
thigh. I had been after the beast two days,
and had exhausted my little stock of food at
the second morning's breakfast. It was nearly
evening when I shot him, and I was famishing
with hunger. I knew I could not get home
that night, so I cut a good whack off old Petz,
and roasted it as well as I could over a fire of
twigs. It didn't need sauce to make it go
down, take my word for it."

When fresh, the meat has a sweet porky
flavour—so sweet that it is generally soaked for
some time in water before being cooked, as
otherwise it would be somewhat sickening to
most palates.

Coming through the village, I had noticed
bears' paws on an escutcheon. These, I now
learned, are the arms of the Planta family, a very
old one in the Engadine. They are appropriate
to this day, for the present representative of the
house has brought down a good many bears
with his own hand. In 1857, eight bears were
shot in the Engadine, and three or four have
been killed in almost every one of the succeeding
years. The bear is a permanent, although
he is yearly becoming a rarer, denizen of the
Rhætian High Alps. He is a regular visitor to
the valleys of Malleuches, Misocco, Terzier,
Bregaglia, Livrio, and Ambra, and other glens
and gorges of that sparsely peopled and
uncultivated region, where the wild cat also still
hunts the marmot, and the vulture swoops down
upon the chamois. Three, or rather four,
descriptions of the Ursus are found in these parts
—the large black, the large grey, and the little
brown bear, to which may be added also the
white bear. A fine specimen of the last named,
shot by Jacob Fili, is in the museum of Coire
(Chur), and another in a private collection at
Bevers. The brown bear is, however, the most
common, the others being exceedingly rare.

On the whole, Grandfather Blacktooth, as
Bruin is popularly called in the Engadine, is of
a comparatively mild good-natured disposition,
and, in a great degree, a vegetarian. Grass,
herbs, roots, and wild berries are the chief
articles of his diet; but occasionally, when these
fail, or when he is seized with a craving for
richer meat, he makes a raid on the goats or
sheep. One is known to have "lifted" fifteen
sheep from the Sutz-alp, in the Engadine, in a
few days, although some oxen joined horns in a
serried phalanx to defy the robber. Another
destroyed twenty-nine on the Buffalora-alp, in
1858; while a third, in ten days, made away
with seventeen at Zernetz. The bear rarely
attacks cattle or horses, and when he does, is
generally worsted, in spite of his great strength,
of which some idea may be formed from the fact
that he has been known to pull a cow out of a
shed through the roof, and to drag a horse across
a deep brook. His usual plan is to spring on
the victim, and bite its neck till it sinks from
loss of blood. Even goats and sheep he does
not always dare to assail openly, preferring to
pounce on them in a fog, or to drive them to
the edge of a precipice, and then to make prize
of those that fall over. Sometimes, however,
he will batter in the door of a stable in order to
prey upon the goats inside. Bruin's well-known
fondness for honey and fruit has often led him
to grief. Although his expeditions are seldom
prolonged beyond ten or twenty hours from the
time he starts from his den, the bear of the
Engadine has, within the present century,
penetrated at different times into the vineyards of
the Pays de Yaud and the Vallais, where his
paws are exhibited as trophies in more than one
châlet. Ants are relished by the bear as an
agreeable acid whet, and are licked up greedily