1862: “Narrow Escape from a Grizzly”

“Marysville Daily Appeal, Friday, May 2, 1862: “Narrow Escape From a Grizzly.”

“A correspondent from the ‘Santa Cruz Sentinel,” writing from Pescadero, gives the following account of a hunting adventure:

On Friday, the 11 inst., Thomas Dale, Rufus Morgan and others were in pursuit of a grizzly bear, which had been committing depredations on the San Gregorio and vicinity. Finding the bear, they succeeded in killing one of the cubs, and wounding the old bear in the neck, which retreated, as they supposed, down the hill to the creek. They had pursued but a few paces when they came upon, and so suddenly that she succeeded in catching Rufus Morgan and mutilating him in so severe a manner that all hopes of his recovery seemed impossible. Dr. Goodspeed was called and rendered immediate aid. Find the skull badly fractured, by the bear biting him so as to tear away the temporal bone, opening to the brain–also destroying one eye, which eye, luckily, he had lost the use of some years since–and shockingly  mangling his left arm and hand; the wounds were dressed by removing a portion of the superior ‘maxilary’ bone, which was displaced. Dr. Goodspeed has hopes of his recovery, if the wound should not be complicated with ‘erysipelatous’ inflammation.”

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