THE PENNSYLVANIA LION OR PANTHER. 37 



veloped the strength of his muscles. Nearer and 

 nearer were the screams of the huge monster. Pfouts 

 gained the race by a few feet, and rushing into the 

 house he dropped the young panthers and seizing his 

 rifle shot the panther, which fell dead near his door. 

 On another occasion, in company with Paul Shade, 

 pushing a canoe up the river laden with provisions, 

 when within a mile or two of his home, at a point 

 where the channel of the stream is narrow, suddenly 

 an enormous panther leaped from his concealed posi- 

 tion among the rocks at the form of Pfouts, and 

 alighted in the water close to the stern of the canoe, the 

 rapid current carrying it some distance down stream 

 before it reached shore. One day, while out hunting 

 with his well-trained dogs, he killed four panthers, 

 and the following day he killed another. Meshach 

 Browning, in his entertaining work entitled "Forty- 

 four Years a Hunter" (first published in Philadelphia 

 in 1865), thus describes the killing of a record panther 

 in the Maryland Mountains, near the Pennsylvania 

 line : 



"Not long after we had settled in our new home, 

 there fell a light snow, when I took my rifle, and, call- 

 ing a dog which I had brought with me from Wheel- 

 ing, which was of the stock of old Mr. Caldwell's 

 hunting dogs, I went into the woods after deer. I had 

 not traveled far before I found the tracks of four 

 deer, which had run off; for they had got wind of me, 

 and dashed into a great thicket to hide themselves. I 

 took the trail, and into the thicket I went, where I 



