Our old friend was more fortunate than a certain youth who attempted to rob an orchard by deluding a fierce bulldog with this approach _à posteriori,_ but who, to his sorrow, found the dog too knowing, for he carried to his dying day the marks of the guardian's teeth in that spot where honor has its seat.
The same quartermaster told us a quaint story of a fright another of the crew received from these jackals.
While at San Francisco the ship's crew were laying in a store of provisions; a large tent was erected on shore for salting the meat; the cooper lived in it, and hung up his hammock at one end. The beef which had been killed during the day was also hung up all around, in readiness for salting. One night a large pack of jackals came down from the woods, and being attracted by the smell of the meat, soon got into the tent, and pulling at one of the sides of beef, brought it down with a crash, which woke the old cooper, who was a remarkably stout, and rather nervous man. Finding himself thus surrounded in the dead of the night by wild beasts, whose forms and size, dimly seen, were magnified by his fears, he fired off his musket, and clasping his arms, in an agony of terror, round a quarter of beef which hung close to his hammock, was found perfectly senseless by an officer who came to see the cause of the alarm. Some difficulty was experienced in getting him to relinquish his hold of the beef--which he stuck to like a Briton--and it was several days before his nerves recovered from the shock of the fright.
The wolf and the jackal tribes are by no means without their use in the economy of nature, though from their predatory habits they are justly regarded as pests in the countries they infest: that they will disturb the dead and rifle the graves is true, but they also clear away offal, and with vultures, are the scavengers of hot countries; they follow on the track of herds, and put a speedy end to the weak, the wounded, and the dying; they are the most useful, though most disgusting of camp followers, and after a battle, when thousands of corpses of men and horses are collected within a limited space, they are of essential service--
I stood in a swampy-field of battle, With bones and skulls I made a rattle To frighten the wolf and carrion crow And the homeless dog--but they would not go; So off I flew--for how could I bear To see them gorge their dainty fare. COLERIDGE.
