190 ANECDOTES OF ANIMALS. 



caught him the ensuing night. The fine was paid, and 

 the skin was given to me. The poor child had a piece 

 of her scalp taken off, a triangular morsel had been 

 bitten from her shoulder, and her throat had a gash on 

 each side of her windpipe. All these wounds appeared 

 as if they had been cut with a knife. None of them 

 were mortal, but she had not strength to encounter the 

 weakness they engendered. Her father brought her in 

 a canoe to headquarters for the attendance of an English 

 surgeon ; but she expired as she was carried ashore. 



A party of us had gone to St. Mary's, near the mouth 

 of the river Gambia.; and m the evening a bright moon- 

 light induced us to take a walk. It was not very pru- 

 dent ; but we started, the commandant, a Quaker lady, 

 and myself, to the outskirts of the forest. My female 

 companion, after we had advanced some distance, began 

 to think of danger, and I, in mischief, rustled among the 

 branches of the thicket in order to alarm her still more. 

 We proceeded as far as a spring under a huge Baobab, 

 where we stood for some time, till the monkeys began 

 to pelt us from the tree over our heads. A slight move- 

 ment in the bushes also seemed to say it was time to 

 depart ; and then, expatiating on our own foolharcli- 

 ness, we went on, and reached home in safety. The 

 next morning we were informed that an enormous 

 leopard had been caught in a trap close to the spring, 

 half an hour after we had been there, and his footsteps 

 had traced upon mine on the sand. We never could 

 understand, humanly speaking, what saved us, unless it 

 were the long white plumes which waved from the hat 

 of the commandant. These traps are generally pit-falls, 

 baited too often with a live kid, whose cries entice the 

 beast of prey. 



