404 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTEES. 



that caution is a highly commendable trait in the character 

 of the Naturalist, but it may carry him into absurdities, too. 

 What is here asserted may be true enough of such poor 

 persecuted feeble specimens of these animals as may be 

 met with occasionally, lurking still about the borders of 

 swamps in the old States, and even at no great distance from 

 some of our southern cities — but that the wild cat did, and 

 does still, in remote localities, and during the rutting season, 

 attack grown up men with a prompt and formidable fierceness, 

 there is abundant evidence. 



I have spoken fully of that salutary effect which the terror 

 of our formidable rifle has gradually impressed upon such 

 creatures in the progress of our civilization — but the frontier 

 settlements furnish many indubitable instances of their natural 

 ferocity. Indeed, I have myself heard from the venerable 

 lips of some of the honored compeers of Boone, in the settle- 

 ment of Kentucky, relations of personal encounters held by 

 themselves on unexpected meetings with creatures of this 

 feline family, for which they were unprepared, and from 

 which they necessarily came off terribly mutilated. 



I remember particularly one instance in which the wild 

 cat was met by the narrator in the narrow path which led 

 from his cabin to the spring. The hardy hunter, though he 

 had no weapon upon him but a common belt or sheath-knife 

 which he always carried, met his assailant with that, and 

 although he was fearfully wounded in the struggle, and 

 would, undoubtedly, have had his bowels torn out, but for 

 the partial protection which his stout buck-skin dress afforded 

 him, yet he succeeded in despatching it with this small 

 weapon. 



The venerable soldier, who, by the way, is the ancestor 

 of a very large and respectable family in Kentucky, showed 

 me the plain scar of wounds from its claws and teeth upon 

 his person. All corroborative circumstances which family 

 reminiscences and the character of the man furnished, left 



