[at-l] IS NJ safe today?!

[kent_gardam at yahoo.com (Kent Gardam)]

Thanks for the bare/bear facts.  I had to stop twice
while reading it and check the sender just to make
sure that it wasn't wasn't another of Felix's fanciful
tales!

--- Richard C Evans <optimyst@gmail.com> wrote:

> According to William Byrd in his book "History of
> the Dividing Line"
> (between Virginia and North Carolina), bears were
> REALLY popular with
> hunters back in the early 18th century.  Here's why:
> 
> "Certainly no Tartar ever loved horse flesh or
> Hottentot guts and
> garbage better than woodsmen do bear.  The truth of
> it is, it may be
> proper food perhaps for such as work or ride it off,
> but, with our
> chaplain's leave, who loved it much, I think it not
> a very proper diet
> for saints, because 'tis apt to make them a little
> too rampant.  And,
> now, for the good of mankind and for the better
> peopling of an infant
> colony, which has no want but that of inhabitants, I
> will venture to
> publish a secret of importance which our Indian
> disclosed to me. I
> asked him the reason why few or none of his
> countrywomen were barren. 
> To which curious question he answered, with a broad
> grin upon his
> face, they had an infallible secret for that.  Upon
> my being
> inportunate to know what the secret might be, he
> informed me that if
> any Indian woman did not prove with a child at a
> decent time after
> marriage, the husband, to save his reputation with
> the women, 
> forthwith entered into a bear diet for 6 weeks,
> which in that time
> makes him so vigorous that he grows exceedingly
> impertinent to his
> poor wife, and 'tis great odds but he makes her a
> mother in 9 months. 
> And thus much I am able to say besides for the
> reputation of the bear
> diet, that all the married men of our company were
> joyful fathers
> within 40 weeks after they got home, and most of the
> single men had
> children sworn to them within the same time, our
> chaplain always
> excepted, who, with much ado, made a shift to cast
> out that
> importunate kind of devil by dint of fasting and
> prayer."
> 
> <Cue ad with Bob Dole as spokesman for the newly
> formed Bearhunters of
> America!">
> 
> Happy trails,
> 
> Solar Bear
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com