Old Ephraim 325 



the country. The attack took place at sunrise; at 

 midday five hundred cartridges had been expended ; 

 the Arabs carried off one of their number dead and 

 six wounded, and the lion remained master of the 

 field of battle." Now, if three hundred men could 

 fire five hundred shots at a lion without hurting 

 him, it merely shows that they were wholly incapa- 

 ble of hurting anything, or else that M. Gerard was 

 more expert with the long-bow than with the rifle. 

 Gerard's whole book is filled with equally prepos- 

 terous nonsense; yet a great many people seriously 

 accept this same book as trustworthy authority for 

 the manners and ferocity of the North African lion. 

 It would be quite as sensible to accept M. Jules 

 Verne's stories as being valuable contributions to 

 science. A good deal of the lion's reputation is built 

 upon just such stuff. 



How the prowess of the grisly compares with that 

 of the lion or tiger would be hard to say; I have 

 never shot either of the latter myself, and my 

 brother, who has killed tigers in India, has never 

 had a chance at a grisly. Any one of the big bears 

 we killed on the mountains would, I should think, 

 have been able to make short work of either a lion 

 or a tiger ; for the grisly is greatly superior in bulk 

 and muscular power to either of the great cats, and 

 its teeth are as large as theirs, while its claws, though 

 blunter, are much longer ; nevertheless, I believe that 

 a lion or a tiger would be fully as dangerous to a 

 hunter or other human being, on account of the su- 

 perior speed of its charge, the lightning-like rapidity 



