So fierce these Greeks their last retreats defend.
And again—
So burns the vengeful hornet (soul all o’er),
Repuls’d in vain, and thirsty still of gore;
Bold son of air and heat, on angry wings
Untam’d, untir’d, he turns, attacks, and stings.
Formidable wild animals are rare, but are still to be found in fastnesses where wild boar offer means of subsistence; they are occasionally driven abroad from their lairs into populated parts, by winter’s severity. Then the unhorned tenants of the wood, sorely grinding their teeth, roam the thickets; ‘then truly are they like unto a man that goes on a stick, whose back is well-nigh broken, and head looks towards the ground; like such an one they roam, shunning the white snow.’
Last winter there was an unusually heavy fall of snow, covering Kabylia with a coat more than a foot thick; it still whitened all northern slopes and blocked the passes, when I visited the country six weeks later. I was told that the roar of a lion had been heard shortly before, in a ravine of the Aïth Ménguellath; this may possibly be true: the Fathers told us that they heard the laugh of the hyena.
Returning last winter to Algiers, whilst passing through the village of Tizi-Ouzou, a dead panther was brought in, shot by a native beside a stream ten miles off, in a populous district separated from the Jurjura by a broad valley; and a little later a second was killed in the same neighbourhood. Curiously, when I was at Tizi-Ouzou before, the same incident occurred; the panther had then been shot in the forests in the direction of Bougie. The only wild animals we came across while camping were jackals, which are numerous; on fine nights we heard their wild empty-stomached howls, when they prowled up from the valleys, and all the dogs in the villages would begin barking. These were the only discordant noises at night; more pleasant was the constant sound of distant frogs croaking in damp places, the welcome melody of nightingales, and the melancholy note of a bird called the Taab, which I believe to be some kind of owl.
And owls that mark the setting sun, declare