60 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



WILD ANIMALS. 



I am often asked, especially by ladies, if it is 

 not dangerous to take such a trip, and if wild ani- 

 mals do not abound in the wilderness ; and I 

 know that many are deterred from making the 

 excursion because of their timidity. The only 

 animals concerning which the most timid could be 

 alarmed are the bear, woK, and panther. The 

 latter is a very ugly neighbor indeed, and the 

 less you have to do with him the better. I am 

 tolerably familiar with wood life, and the sights 

 and sounds of such danger as one is liable to 

 meet in the wilderness ; and John and I have 

 slept more than once, calmly enough, with our 

 rifles inside our blankets, not knowing when we 

 lay down what cry might awaken us ; but I should 

 not purposely put myself in the way of a panther, 

 unless I could run my eye along the sights of my 

 double rifle when the barrels were freshly charged. 

 In speaking of the panther, I do not, of course, al- 

 lude to the Canadian wild-cat, with which the igno- 

 rant often confound the panther, but to the puma 

 itself, an animal which often measures twelve feet 

 from tip to tip, and is the slyest, strongest, bloodiest 

 ranger of the woods. Now, fortunately, the pan- 

 ther is almost wholly unknown in this region. A 

 few still live among the loneliest defiles and darkest 



