HOWLING-MONKEYS-PRAIRIE-WOLVES.

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quickly came, and, taking him down to the boat, during which time Mr Beale was employed in keeping the beak of the Octopus away from his hand, soon released him by destroying his tormentor with the boat-knife, when he disengaged it by portions at a time. This Cephalopod measured across its expanded arms about four feet, while its body was not bigger than a man's fist.*

The shriek of the jackal bursting on the ear in the silence of night has been described by many a dweller in tents in the East as a most appalling sound. But perhaps this yields in effect to the combined efforts of the howling-monkeys in a South American forest. This most striking of all animal voices is heard occasionally at sunrise and sunset, and sometimes in the heat of the day, but more frequently during the darkness of the night. When near, the roar is terrific: a naturalist + has compared it to the tempest howling through rocky caverns. It is a noise so unearthly, that, heard unexpectedly for the first time, it would fill the mind with the most melancholy and fearful forebodings.

A traveller in the western wilds of North America bivouacking on the open prairie, awakened at midnight by the voices of a pack of prairie-wolves giving tongue around him, speaks of the wierd impression made on him by hearing a pack in full cry at the dead of the night,* and compares it to the phantom hounds and huntsman of the German legends.‡

What was this, however, to Gordon Cumming's noctur*Hist. of the Sperm Whale. + Mr Bates, in the Zoologist, p. 3593. Sullivan's Rambles in America, p. 77.

nal adventure with the wilde honden in Africa? He was watching for game in a hole which he had dug by a pool in that romantic fashion already alluded to, and, having shot a gnu, had put down his rifle without reloading it, and dropped asleep.

He had not slept long before his slumbers were disturbed by strange sounds. He dreamed that lions were rushing about in quest of him, till, the sounds increasing, he awoke with a sudden start, uttering a loud shriek. He heard the rushing of light feet on every side, accompanied by the most unearthly noises, and, on raising his head, to his utter horror, saw himself surrounded by troops of what the colonists call wild dogs, a savage animal between a wolf and a hyena. To the right and left, and within a few paces of the bold hunter, stood two lines of these ferociouslooking animals, cocking their ears and stretching their necks to have a look at him; while two large troops, containing forty at least, kept dashing backwards and forwards across his wind, chattering and growling with the most extraordinary volubility. Another troop of the wild dogs were fighting over the gnu that had been shot; and, on beholding them, the expectation of being himself presently torn in pieces made the blood curdle over his cheeks, and the hair bristle on his head.

In this dilemma the experienced hunter bethought himself of the power of the human voice and a determined bearing in overawing brute animals; and, springing to his feet, he stepped upon the little ledge surrounding the hole, when drawing himself up to his full height,

he waved his large blanket with both hands, at the same time addressing his certainly attentive audience in a loud and solemn tone. This had the desired effect: the wild dogs shrank to a more respectful distance, barking at him like so many colleys. Upon this he began to load his rifle, and before this was accomplished the entire pack had retreated.*

*The Lion Hunter, chap. ix.

X.

THE TERRIBLE

MAN'S connexion with the creation around him occasionally brings him into circumstances of more serious result than a temporary excitement of the imagination, and a thrilling of the nerves, which might be on the whole rather pleasant than otherwise. He was indeed invested with lordship over the inferior creatures, and in general they own his dominion; but many of them are endowed with powers for evil, to which he can oppose no effectual resistance; at least, none so invariably effectual, but that occasions occur in which the mastery is reversed. Some are furnished with enormous weight and strength, able to crush him with mere brute momentum; others carry formidable weapons, horns and hoofs, claws and teeth, tusks and fangs, wielded with consummate skill, and made more effective by the aid of muscular strength, fleetness of pace, agility, instinct of combination, or cunning strategy. Others, small and apparently contemptible, are yet armed with implements so terribly lethal, that the slightest puncture of the skin by one of them, darted too with lightning-like rapidity and almost unerring precision, is inevitably and immediately followed by the most horrid form of death.