Exhibit item:
WILLIAM HEATH DAVIS
Glimpses of the Past: manuscript, undated

Quotation:
WILLIAM HEATH DAVIS
Glimpses of the Past: manuscript, undated

"My wife’s father once told me that in one night he, with ten soldiers from the Presido of San Francisco, in the woods at a place near San Francisquito, one of the stock ranchos of the Mission of Santa Clara containing many thousand cattle and horses - about where Mountain View is now, on the Southern Pacific Railroad - lassoed and killed forty bears in one night.

They had a relay of horses to aid them in their work, and the soldiers having originally been vaqueros were quite at home in the sport. It was in the killing season, and the bears, smelling the meat, had come down from the mountain to partake of it.

My father-in-law said this was the most exciting event of his life, and that they were so interested in dispatching the bears they forgot all danger.

The animals were lassoed by the throat and also by the hind leg, a horseman at each end, and the two pulling in opposite directions till the poor beast succumbed. The fun was kept up until about daylight, and when they got through they were completely exhausted and then discovered how much work they had done.

That region of country was largely infested with bears and many hundreds were in the mountains back, and that place was especially noted for bear-hunting by Californians."