and herds, and many springs
and streams of water. There were, however, several districts of
mountainous country, which were the refuge of tigers, leopards,
wolves, and other ferocious beasts of prey. It was among these
mountains that the great hunting parties which Genghis Khan organized
from time to time went in search of their game. There was a great
officer of the kingdom, called the grand huntsman, who had the
superintendence and charge of every thing relating to hunting and to
game throughout the empire. The grand huntsman was an officer of the
very highest rank. He even took precedence of the first ministers of
state. Genghis Khan appointed his son Jughi, who has already been
mentioned in connection with the great council of war called by his
father, and with the battle which was subsequently fought, and in
which he gained great renown, to the office of grand huntsman, and, at
the same time, made two of the older and more experienced khans his
ministers of state.

The hunting of wild beasts as ferocious as those that infested the
mountains of Asia is a very dangerous amusement even at the present
day, notwithstanding the advantage which the huntsman derives from the
use of gunpowder, and rifled barrels, and fulminating bullets. But in
those days, when the huntsman had no better weapons than bows and
arrows, javelins, and spears, the undertaking was dangerous in the
extreme. An African lion of full size used to be considered as a match
for _forty_ men in the days when only ordinary weapons were used
against him, and it was considered almost hopeless to attack him with
less than that number. And even with that number to waylay and assail
him he was not usually conquered until he had killed or disabled two
or three of his foes.

Now, however, with the terrible artillery invented in modern times, a
single man, if he has the requisite courage, coolness, and steadiness
of nerve, is a match for such a lion. The weapon used is a
double-barreled carabine, both barrels being _rifled_, that is,
provided with spiral grooves within, that operate to give the bullets
a rotary motion as they issue from the muzzle, by which they bore
their way through the air, as it were, to their destination, with a
surprising directness and precision. The bullets discharged by these
carabines are not balls, but cylinders, pointed with a cone at the
forward end. They are hollow, and are filled with a fulminating
composition which is capable of