The voice of a bear was like that of a woman in distress.

July 14. 

Wednesday. 

This forenoon we rode on through Whitefield to Bethlehem, clouds for the most part concealing the higher mountains. 

Found the Geum strictum in bloom in Whitefield; also common flax by a house. 

Got another fine view of the mountains — the higher ones much more distant than before— from a hill just south of the public house in Bethlehem, but might have got a better view from a higher hill a little more east, which one said was the highest land between the Green and the White Mountains, of course on that line. 

Saw the Stratford Peaks, thirty or forty miles north, and many mountains east of them. Climbed the long hill from Franconia to the Notch, passed the Profile House, and camped half a mile up the side of Lafayette. 

***

Willey says of Jackson, “The great number of sheep scattered upon the mountains make it the principal place of resort for what bears and wolves are yet left among these hills.” 

Wentworth said that he had trapped and killed a number of them. They killed many of his sheep and calves, and destroyed much of his corn when in the milk, close to his house. A sheep could run faster than a bear, but was not so long winded, especially going up a mountainside. 

The bear, when pursued, would take directly to some distant and impenetrable thicket, as these dark fir thickets on the mountainside. He once found some young bears on a nest made-of small dry sticks collected under a ledge, and raising them five or six inches from the ground. He carried home the young and reared them. 

The voice of a bear was like that of a woman in distress. 

It was in Gilead, the first town (in Maine) northeast from Jackson, that Bean killed his bear, thrusting his arm down her throat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 14, 1858

The voice of a bear was like that of a woman in distress. See July 8, 1858 (“In the course of the afternoon we heard, as we thought, a faint shout, and . . . soon Wentworth decided that it must be a bear, for they make a noise like a woman in distress. ”)

Bean killed his bear, thrusting his arm down her throat. Benjamin G. Willey's Incidents in White Mountain History (1856) ("A Mr. Bean was at work in his field, accompanied by a boy twelve years of age. The bear approached him, and having his gun with him, charged for partridges, he fired, but with little effect. The bear bore down upon him; he walked backwards, loading his gun at the same time, when his foot caught by a twig, which tripped him up, and the bear leaped upon him. He immediately fired again, but with no visible effect. The bear at once went to work,—seizing his left arm, biting through it, and lacerating it severely. While thus amusing himself, he was tearing with his fore paws the clothes, and scratching the flesh on the young man's breast. Having dropped his arm, he opened his huge mouth to make a pounce at his face. Then it was that the young man made the dash that saved his life. As the bear opened his jaws, Bean thrust his lacerated arm down the brute's throat, as far as desperation would enable him. There he had him! The bear could neither retreat nor advance, though the position of the besieged was anything but agreeable. Bean now called upon the lad to come and take from his pocket a jack-knife and open it. The boy marched up to the work boldly. Having got the knife, Bean with his untrammeled hand cut the bear's throat from ear to ear, killing him stone dead, while he lay on his body! It was judged the bear weighed nearly four hundred pounds. One of his paws weighed two pounds eleven ounces.”)