THE LION HUNTING BRIGADE. 359 



situation, that I had devised a means for their relief — a means 

 more lasting than my own individual life, and that would 

 draw down on our people the eternal gratitude of the Arab. 

 This plan was simply an organization similar to the one that 

 has been instituted in many parts of France, to free the 

 country from wolves, and such an institution devoted to lion 

 hunting was my project and ambition. 



The plan was perfectly simple. I would have enrolled 

 volunteers taken from the infantry regiments in Africa, also 

 a number of native Arabs, and with them formed a complete 

 corps of chasseurs under the army regulations, with myself 

 at their head as their leader. This body of men should 

 be at the service of the commanders of provinces or dis- 

 tricts w r herever there was need of them, to hunt and kill a 

 lion. 



I estimated that this organization would cost about twenty- 

 five thousand francs a year to the province of Constantine, 

 which province loses at the present time about two hundred 

 thousand francs a year by the ravages of the lion. 



The tribes that principally suffer from the attacks of these 

 devastators would most readily defray, not only the original 

 expense of the organization, but also the annual costs of the 

 company, and I do not hesitate to say, that there never 

 has been a foreign squadron hailed with such enthusiasm 

 and gratitude, as would be a company like the one I pro- 

 pose. 



I had made so many friends in Paris among those in 

 authority, that my plan was immediately taken into con- 

 sideration, and accepted, and would have been carried out 

 had it not been for the revolution of 1848, that interrupted 

 all the machinery of the government. So I had to remain 

 Poor Jack, as before, with only the remembrance of the good 

 I intended to have done to console me, and the arms I had 

 received from the young Count de Paris, to carry out the 



