r looked upon a real tiger outside of a menagerie,
and am not qualified to give an opinion. I brought my opera glass and
Borasdine Iris rifle, but the beast did not again show himself.
Provoked by this glimpse my companions retired to the cabin and made a
theoretical combat with the animal until dinner time.

The day was made memorable by a decent dinner; the special reason for
it was the fact that Borasdine had presented our caterer with an old
coat. I regretted I could not afford to reduce my wardrobe, else we
would have secured another comfortable repast. Both steward and cook
were somewhat negligently clad, and possibly a spare garment or two
might have opened their hearts and larders.

Of course the sight of the tiger led to stories about his kindred, and
we whiled away a portion of the evening in narrating incidents of a
more or less personal character. An officer, who was temporarily our
fellow-passenger, on his way to one of the Cossack posts, a few miles
above, gave an account of his experience with a tiger on the Ousuree.

I was out (said he) on a survey that we were making on behalf of the
government to establish the boundary between Russia and China. The
country was then less known than now; there were no settlements along
the river, and with the exception of the villages of the natives,
thirty or forty miles apart, the whole country was a wilderness. At
one village we were warned that a large tiger had within a month
killed two men and attacked a third, who was saved only by the sudden
and unexpected appearance of a party of friends. We prepared our
rifles and pistols, to avoid the possibility of their missing fire in
case of an encounter with the man-stealing beast. Rather reluctantly
some of the natives consented to serve us as guides to the next
village. We generally found them ready enough to assist us, as we paid
pretty liberally for their services, and made love to all the young
women that the villages contained. With an eye to a successful
campaign, I laid in a liberal supply of trinkets to please these
aboriginals, and found that they served their purposes admirably. So
the natives were almost universally kind to us, and their reluctance
to accompany us on this occasion showed the great fear they
entertained of the tiger.

We were camped on the bank of the Ousuree, about ten miles from the
village, and passed the night without disturbance. In the morning,
while we were preparing for breakfast, o