are
insufficient to induce them to serve as sailors, to take them away by
force. At Tacames, in Colombia, Dr Coulter fell in with a Californian who
had served for some time on board an American ship. Jack, so his Yankee
shipmates had christened him, had gone on board, in company with another
of his tribe, to sell furs, and had not been allowed to go ashore again.
His companion died of grief and ill-treatment on the coast of Japan, and
Jack, when his services were no longer needed, was left at Tacames, two or
three thousand miles from his native land. He belonged to a wandering
tribe who lived by bartering furs for powder, tobacco, and other Indian
necessaries, and, as an experienced and intrepid hunter, was invaluable to
Dr Coulter. The account of their expeditions in the South American forests
is highly interesting, and we are willing to believe unexaggerated,
although some portions of the doctor's venatorial adventures and
experiences, both in South America and elsewhere, do remind us a little of
the marvels recorded in a diverting and apocryphal book put forth a few
years ago by all ingenious nautical author. On the first day of their
sortie, Jack and his employer, after passing unharmed through jungles
peopled by gigantic monkeys of great boldness, who made various attempts
to purloin their caps and guns, but did not otherwise molest them, reached
a deep ravine, where the barking and howling of beasts were loud and
incessant. Presently a wild horse dashed past them, pursued by a brace of
tigers. The horse dropped from fatigue, the tigers sprang upon him, the
ambushed hunters fired. The doctor's tiger was killed on the spot; "my
shot, after passing through him, entered the horse's neck, and killed him
also." Jack's aim had been less deadly; his beast was wounded, but still
active and dangerous. Dr Coulter proposed giving him the contents of his
second barrel, but the guide preferred to use his knife. The account of
the hand-to-hand combat that ensued reminds us of those graphic records of
bruising matches that occasionally grace the columns of the weekly
newspapers. Pierce Egan himself could hardly recount the progress of a
"mill" between the "Tipton Slasher and the Paddington Pet" in terser and
more knowing style than that employed by John Coulter in narrating the
set-to between Jack and the tiger. "Jack went boldly up to him; the
infuriated animal grinned horridly and writhed rapidly about, throwing up
a good deal o