404 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
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, aid 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 venerablé 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 tho character of the man furnished, left 
