FEBRUARY 2, 1851.
The town went clean crazy this afternoon. I would not have believed that white men could have made such fools of themselves if I had-not been there. When I was over in Nevada yesterday I saw on the front of Cald-well's store a big poster which said there was going to be a grand fight between a ferocious grizzly bear and the champion fighting jackass of the State, the scrap to take place Sunday afternoon in a valley just beyond the ridge on the trail to Centerville (Grass Valley). The bill claimed that the jack had whipped two bulls and killed a mountain lion in previous fights at Sonora, and was expected to be a fair match for the grizzly. Most everybody thought it was a sell, but we found out that a ring had been built and preparations made for the fight.
I was curious to see it and rode down to the valley in the afternoon along with about all the rest of the population.
Sure enough, there was a stockade about forty feet in diameter, made of split pine stakes driven in the ground and bound together around the top with strips of rawhide. It looked pretty weak to hold a big grizzly, but one of the showmen said the jack would keep the bear too busy for him to think of breaking away, so we concluded to chance it. A large cage held the beast, a trap door opening into the ring, and we could hear the bear growling, although the chinks were stopped up so that nobody could see the prisoner. The fighting jackass was hitched to one of the stakes and for looks he didn't show to whip a sick pup, let alone a fierce grizzly; but the boss was willing to take odds in his favor, although no one wanted any bets on the game. A rope about two hundred feet from the ring stretched around the stockade. It cost a dollar to get inside, and as at least two thousand rustled for logs and stumps to stand on and paid the money it was a pretty profitable speculation. After waiting an hour or more the crowd grew impatient and yelled for the show to begin, but the boss would not start it until a lot of outsiders, who had climbed trees and were trying to see the fight free had put up the same price as the rest of us, and, as we all thought that was fair, they had to pungle.
The jackass was turned loose and started in nibbling grass as if he were not particularly concerned in the proceedings. Then, after a lot of fiddling around, two men pried open the trap door, and we all held our breaths, expecting to see a grand rush of a ferocious beast and a dead burro . The bear wouldn't come out until they poked him with a pole, and when he finally waddled into the enclosure there was a roar from the crowd that made the woods ring. Instead of a fierce, blood-thirsty grizzly it was only a scared little cinnamon bear that didn't weigh over four hundred or five hundred pounds. He sat on his haunches for a minute, frightened almost to death by the noise and the crowd, and then walked in a friendly way toward his opponent. The donkey wasn't making friends and when the bear got close enough the jackass whirled and gave him a couple of thundering kicks in the ribs, and then went on eating grass as if bears were nothing to him. The bear picked himself up, made a break for the fence, went over it in two jumps and started for the chapparal.