A woman at Annamaboo was very much scarred on one arm and shoulder, in consequence of a panther having sprung upon her when her child was at her back, and she was carrying a pitcher of water. The pitcher fell, and she made so vigorous an attack upon his eyes, that he became bewildered, and retreated. This is not the only instance I have heard of wild and ferocious animals being driven away by blows on this part. A little girl of fourteen, who was to have been my maid as soon as she was old enough, was not as fortunate as her neighbour; she being attacked by a panther who sprang upon her through an open window, in a room where she was sleeping by herself. Her cries brought her family round her, and the beast made his escape as he had entered, but having once tasted blood there, he was sure to return, and a trap was made which caught him the ensuing night; the fine was paid, and the skin was given to me. The poor child had a piece of her scalp taken off, a triangular morsel had been bitten from her shoulder; and her throat had a gash on each side of her windpipe. All these wounds appeared as if they had been cut with a knife; none of them were mortal, but she had not strength to encounter the weakness they engendered. Her father brought her in a canoe to head-quarters for the attendance of an English surgeon, but she expired as she was carried ashore. A party of us had gone to St. Mary's near the mouth of the river Gambia; and in the evening a bright moonlight induced us to take a walk. It was not very prudent; but we started, the commandant, a quaker lady and myself, to the outskirts of the forest. My female companion after we had advanced some distance, began to think of danger, and I, in mischief, rustled among the branches of the thicket in order to alarm her still more. We proceeded as far as a spring under a huge Baobab, where we stood for some time, till the monkeys began to pelt us from the tree over our heads. A slight movement in the bushes also seemed to say it was time to depart; and then, expatiating on our own fool-hardiness, we went on, and reached home in safety. The next morning we were informed, that an enormous leopard had been caught in a trap close to the spring, half an hour after we had been there, and his footsteps had been traced upon mine in the sand. We never could understand, humanly speaking, what saved us, unless it were the long white plumes which waved from the hat of the commandant. These traps are generally pitfalls, baited, too often, with a live kid, whose cries entice the beast of prey.