GENERAL NOTES 
39 
p. 79, 1831). In this connection it should be observed that to this day the Spanish 
Californians and Indians invariably apply the term ‘lion’ to the mountain lion 
or cougar. A little later Saint-Amant, in a work published in Paris in 1854, 
recorded the jaguar as a California mammal. {Voyages en Californie et dans 
V Oregon, p. 537, 1854). 
It has been customary to look askance at these early records, but the detailed 
account of a family of Jaguars seen repeatedly in the Tehachapi Mountains by 
James Capen Adams, as recorded by the late Judge Theodore Hittell, is so cir- 
cumstantial as to admit of no question as to the identity of the animal. Adams 
either saw a pair of jaguars and their young, or he lied out of whole cloth. While 
neither the date nor the exact locality are stated, we are told that Adams, after 
leaving the Tejon and traveling over a rough rnountainous country, camped at a 
spring in a gorge facing the Great Basin. The rough mountainous country tra- 
versed was of course the Tehachapi Mountains, and the part of the Great Basin 
looked out upon must have been the western part of the Mohave Desert. 
The first night of his stay at the spring he was awakened by a fearful snuffing 
and snorting among his animals and saw in the darkness two spots like balls of 
fire, which he recognized as the eyes of the beast that had frightened his horses. 
The next day, taking his hunting companions — a tame grizzly named ‘Ben’ and 
his dog ‘Rambler’ — he followed the trail of the animal for four or five miles to 
another gorge, where he finally located the den in a cave on the side of a cliff 
in an exceedingly rough and inaccessible place. “In its mouth, and scattered 
below it, were multitudes of bones and skeletons of various kinds of animals, 
and among others, of Mountain Sheep, making the place look like the yard of a 
slaughter-house . ’ ’ 
A few nights later he was wakened by a roar, and in the feeble light of a new 
moon saw “a spotted animal, resembling a tiger in size and form, with two 
young ones.” Another night, soon after dark, the male appeared at the mouth 
of the den, “looked around, and sniffed the air, and then leaped down, and going 
a few yards placed his paws upon a rock, and stretched himself, yawning at the 
same time as if he were waking up out of a sleep. A few minutes afterwards the 
female appeared, and approaching, lapped his brawny neck.” The male, as 
nearly as could be seen, ‘ ‘was twice as large as the ordinary cougar, and appeared 
to be covered with dark round spots of great richness and beauty.” 
For several weeks Adams continued his fruitless attempts to trap or kill the 
animals, obtaining from time to time passing glimpses of them, until finally he 
unexpectedly came across the mother and cubs in a gorge far away from the 
den. He fired at her, whereupon his grizzly ‘Ben’ and dog ‘Rambler’ bounded 
forward and “engaged with her in a terrific combat, but she tore them dread- 
fully and managed to escape.” {Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer 
& Grizzly Bear Hunter of California, by Theodore H. Hittell, San Francisco, 
359-369, 1860). 
Since writing the above, Vernon Bailey has called my attention to an old 
record by Pattie, which I read many years ago but had forgotten. Pattie states 
that when on islands in the delta of Colorado River, they killed an animal like an 
African leopard which came into their camp, and was the first of its kind they 
had ever seen (James O. Pattie, Personal Narrative, Cincinnati, 1833). 
