253 On the discovery of 



lion, the tyger. Such individuals as have their haunts 

 iieareH: the inhabited frontier, enter it occarionally, and 

 commit depredations when preffed by hunger : but the 

 mafs of their nation (if I may ufe the term] never ap- 

 proach the habitation of man, nor are within reach of it. 

 When our anceftors arrived here, the Indian population, 

 below the falls of the rivers, was about the twentieth 

 part of vv'hat it now is. In this ftate of things, an ani- 

 mal rei'embling the lion feems to have been known even 

 in the lower country. Moft of the accounts given by 

 the earlier adventurers to this part of America make a 

 lion one of the animals of our forefts. Sir John Haw- 

 kins * mentions this in 1564. Thomas Harriot, a man 

 of learning, and of diftinguiflied candor, who refided 

 in Virginia in ijSy-f- does the fame, fo alio does Bul- 

 lock in his accoimt of Virginia, j; written about 1627, 

 he fays he drew his information from Pierce, V/illough- 

 by, Claiborne, and others who had been here, and from 

 his own father who had lived here twelve years. It does 

 not appear whether the fad; is ftated on their own view, 

 or on information from the Indians, probably the latter. 

 The progrefs of the new population would foon drive 

 ofFthe larger animals, and the largeft firft. In the pre- 

 fent interior of our continent there is furely fpace and 

 range enough for elephants and lions, if in that climate 

 they could fubiin: ; and for mammoths and megalonyxes 

 who may fubfui there. Our entire ignorance of the im- 

 menfe country to the Weft and North- Weft, and of its 

 contents, does not authorife us to fay what it does not 

 contain. 



Moreover it is a fa£l well known, and always fuf- 

 ceptible of verification, that on a rock on the bank of the 



* HakUiyt, 541. edition of 1589. 



■f Ibid. 757, and Smith's Hillory of Virginia, lo. 



t Bullock, page 5. 



I Kanhawa, 



