There is no royal road to success in the mountains, but there is the old road still for the self-reliant and adventurous who don’t stick to old trails and the railroad, and there is still plenty of game, for those who know how to seek it, in Colorado, British Columbia, Washington Territory, Ontario, Alaska, and even in parts of the province of Quebec. So much I dare personally guarantee.
I. PANTHER (Felis concolor)
Puma (Felis concolor)
The American Panther (Felis concolor) is a beast of many aliases but of few virtues. He is the ‘painter,’ ‘catamount,’ ‘mountain lion,’ ‘cougar,’ ‘Californian lion,’ or ‘puma’ of early American legends; but, in spite of his many high-sounding titles, he is a mean, sneaking beast, hiding in dense timber by day, stealing or destroying more sheep in one night than he can eat in six months, affording no sport to anyone, and very little profit even to the fur dealer. Those who hunt the panther generally hunt him with dogs, and no dog is too small for the work, for the American lion will tree before a terrier and let himself be shot by a boy with ‘bird-shot.’ I am not traducing the beast, for I have myself hunted him with terriers in the States. But let an American authority be heard upon the question. A book was published in 1890 called ‘Big Game of North America,’ to which several well-known authorities contributed, such as Caton, Van Dyke, and Fannin. The authority referred to, however, is not one of these three, but a Mr. Perry, who maintains that the American lion is not a cowardly animal, and cites in support of his contention six or seven instances in which panthers attacked human beings unprovoked. In the first instance (p. 413) the ferocious animal was defeated and driven off by an heroic boy of twelve armed with an empty brandy-bottle. In the second case a blue-jacket who had deserted from Esquimault and ‘found his way through the woods until he rested under the domain of the starry flag,’ killed the panther which attacked him there by a ‘gladiatorial thrust’ with a spade (p. 415). The third and fourth of Mr. Perry’s pugnacious panthers behaved somewhat differently—one followed a gentleman, the other followed a lady, and in both cases showed the human beings somewhat marked attentions, licking their hands, gazing ‘intently’ into their eyes, and tearing off most of their clothes, but nothing more. The fifth panther was caned by a gentleman from Snohomish, and the sixth was stared out of countenance and put to flight by someone from Brownsville, whom the panther had knocked off his horse; but it was reserved for another hero from Snohomish to perform the marvellous feat of catching a panther on the wing (‘as it was passing in the air’) with ‘his left arm round its body just behind the forelegs.’ Of course, having got his grip, the gentleman from Snohomish thumped the head of that poor panther with his gun-barrels till it died. In this Homeric struggle the victor lost nothing but the tail of his night-shirt.
Now, no doubt all these stories are quite true, and they undoubtedly prove great courage in someone, but not, it seems, in the panther; so that in spite of Mr. Perry I am obliged to accept the general opinion upon this subject as the correct one, backed as it is by a statement just made to me by Mr. John Fannin, the curator of the British Columbian Museum—an accepted authority in the American press upon such matters, and an ‘old timer’ who has had many opportunities of observing this beast—that he had never come across a well-authenticated story of a panther showing fight to (much less attacking) a man. From Mr. Fannin I obtained the measurements of the largest panthers out of the twenty-five or so which have been sent to him in late years to be skinned. The longest of these was a male from the mainland of British Columbia, killed on the Frazer river, which measured 8 ft. 2 ins. from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail. The largest killed upon the island and sent to my friend was also a male which measured 7 ft. 3 ins. One hundred and fifty pounds is the weight of a large panther as given by Mr. J. E. Harting, in some notes published by him upon American mammalia, and I have no doubt that this is about what an average male would weigh, but I am only judging by my eye, and not from any accepted record of the actual weight of any particular beast.
The panther’s food consists of small game of all kinds, deer, and more especially sheep and pigs, and other farm produce. In nine cases out of ten the panthers which are killed are found near a sheep ranch, and it is notorious that the men who get panthers are not hunters, explorers, or men on a survey party where only wild game is likely to be found, but rather farmers and others who have stock to look after near a settlement.
It may be that in Montana and Wyoming the panther grows larger and is more courageous than he is on the Pacific coast; but even there he is held in some contempt by the mountain-men who know him. He has a habit, it is said, of following a belated hunter to camp howling in the most diabolical manner, but he never proceeds to extremities.
Some idea of the number of these beasts upon Vancouver Island and in British Columbia generally may be derived from the fact that the British Columbian Government paid bounties for the scalps of seventy-two in 1892, all but two, I believe, having been killed upon the island.