Hunting in Many Lands 



slashing so much as in drawing the victim to 

 them to crush out its life with their strong 

 jaws. 



I have said, one never knows how to take 

 the cougar. Almost every mining camp in the 

 West will produce somebody who has met and 

 scared him to flight by a mere wave of the 

 hand or a shout, and that identical camp will 

 as like as not produce men that have had the 

 most trying experiences with the same animal. 

 It is this knowledge that makes you, to say 

 the least, a little uncomfortable when you 

 meet one of these creatures. I have had many 

 trying experiences of one kind and another, 

 and hunted many different kinds of game, but 

 none ever harassed my soul as the cougar 

 has. On one occasion I had been about five 

 miles from camp, prospecting for gold, which 

 I had discovered in such alluring quantities 

 as to keep me panning until darkness put an 

 end to my work and started me homeward. 

 It was a pretty dark night, and my trail lay 

 along the side of a mountain that was rather 

 thickly wooded and a pretty fair sort of hunt- 

 ing country. I had left my cabin early in the 

 morning, intent on finding one of the numer- 

 ous fortunes that was confidently believed to 



248 



