exploding with a force vastly greater
than that of gunpowder. The conical point at the end is made separate
from the body of the cylinder, and slides into it by a sort of shank,
which, when the bullet strikes the body of the lion or other wild
beast, acts like a sort of percussion cap to explode the fulminating
powder, and thus the instant that the missile enters the animal's body
it bursts with a terrible explosion, and scatters the iron fragments
of the cylinder among his vitals. Thus, while an ordinary musket ball
might lodge in his flesh, or even pass entirely through some parts of
his body, without producing any other effect than to arouse him to a
phrensy, and redouble the force with which he would spring upon his
foe, the bursting of one of these fulminating bullets almost any where
within his body brings him down in an instant, and leaves him writhing
and rolling upon the ground in the agonies of death.

On the Boulevard des Italiens, in Paris, is the manufactory of
Devisme, who makes these carabines for the lion-hunters of Algiers.
Promenaders, in passing by his windows, stop to look at specimens of
these bullets exhibited there. They are of various sizes, adapted to
barrels of different bores. Some are entire; others are rent and torn
in pieces, having been fired into a bank of earth, that they might
burst there as they would do in the body of a wild beast, and then be
recovered and preserved to show the effect of the explosion.

Even with such terrible weapons as these, it requires at the present
day great courage, great coolness, and very extraordinary steadiness
of nerve to face a lion or a tiger in his mountain fastness, with any
hope of coming off victorious in the contest. But the danger was, of
course, infinitely greater in the days of Genghis Khan, when pikes
and spears, and bows and arrows, were the only weapons with which the
body of huntsmen could arm themselves for the combat. Indeed, in those
days wild beasts were even in some respects more formidable enemies
than men. For men, however excited by angry passions, are, in some
degree, under the influence of fear. They will not rush headlong upon
absolute and certain destruction, but may be driven back by a mere
display of force, if it is obvious that it is a force which they are
wholly incapable of resisting. Thus a party of men, however desperate,
may be attacked without much danger to the assailants, provided that
the force which the assailants