THE PANTHER. 87 



instinctively understands), the turkeys, who feed 

 around the tnniks of the trees, or the hares come 

 around him, and then at a favourable moment he 

 will make his spring, and rarely misses his prey. 



Sometimes the panther will attack man himself, 

 but this is usually when he is very hungry and his 

 little ones are famishing. The following story will 

 support this statement. The second time I hunted 

 the panther, it was at Shenandoah, in the State of 

 Virginia, on the banks of Cedar Creek River, which 

 flows at the foot of a lofty chain of mountains, w^hose 

 summits are covered with pines, cedars, and tufted 

 bushes. — I had been very hospitably entreated in 

 the house of Mr. Pendleton, and one evening we 

 were seated around a table, busily engaged in filling 

 our glasses out of a bowl of whiskj- punch, when 

 suddenly our conversation was interrupted by the 

 fearful cries Avhicli issued from a chamber close to 

 the dining-room. Mrs. Pendleton was there, with 

 a sick infant and its nurse. The window, it ap- 

 peared, had been open, and an enormous panther 

 had leapt from the top of the piazza and was ready 

 to spring upon the child's cradle. The cries of the 

 poor mother and nurse soon brought us to the 

 room, but the brute had taken fright, and we only 

 learnt what had take place when it was too late to 

 go in pursuit. The dogs about the house were let 

 loose on the traces of the panther; but they soon 

 came back, with their tails between their legs, as if 



