352 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



would strike a trail. It might take some time to puzzle 

 it out; then the whole pack would be away, and all the 

 men ran helter-skelter after them, plunging over logs and 

 through swamps, and now and then taking headers in 

 the darkness. We were never fortunate enough to strike 

 a coon, which would have given a good run and a fight 

 at the end of it. When the unfortunate possum was over- 

 taken on the ground he was killed before we got up. 

 Otherwise he was popped alive into one of the big bags 

 carried by the axemen. Two or three times he got into a 

 hollow log or hole and we dug or chopped him out. Gen- 

 erally, however, he went up a tree. It was a picturesque 

 sight, in the flickering glare of the torches, to see the dogs 

 leaping up around the trunk of a tree and finally to make 

 out the possum clinging to the trunk or perched on some 

 slender branch, his eyes shining brightly through the 

 darkness ; or to watch the muscular grace with which the 

 darky axemen, ragged and sinewy, chopped into any tree 

 if it had too large and smooth a trunk to climb. A pos- 

 sum is a queer, sluggish creature, whose brain seems to 

 work more like that of some reptile than like a mam- 

 mal's. When one is found in a tree there is no difficulty 

 whatever in picking it off with the naked hand. Two 

 or three times during the night I climbed the tree myself, 

 either going from branch to branch or swarming up some 

 tangle of grape-vines. The possum opened his mouth as 

 I approached and looked as menacing as he knew how; 

 but if I pulled him by the tail he forgot everything ex- 

 cept trying to grab with all four feet, and then I could 

 take him by the back of the neck and lift him off either 



