As to the former occurrence of the Lion in places where it is now absent, we may instance its evident commonness in Palestine. One of the earliest Lion stories occurs in the history of the Hebrew Hercules, who, when travelling with his father and mother to Timnath, “came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young Lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.”[9] Every one will remember David’s account of his encounter with the tawny savage in the Syrian pasture lands. “And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a Lion, and a Bear, and took a Lamb out of the flock: and I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. Thy servant slew both the Lion and the Bear.”[10] [Illustration: LION OF SENEGAL.] Another Lion-slayer is one of David’s “braves”--Benaiah--“He went down also and slew a Lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow.”[11] Now this slight mention of the forest-king is a perfect picture in a few short words. In that land of milk and honey there was snow at certain seasons, and then that huge, bearded Cat was fain to hide himself in some cleft of the rock. If, however, the term “pit” means one in which the Lion has fallen, being entrapped, the short snatch of history loses none of its interest. The calm courage of this man made him to be “more honourable than the thirty mighty men,” in the list of David’s captains. After the deportation of the ten tribes to Babylon, the number of Lions and other beasts of prey must have increased to a fearful extent in Palestine, for we find the men sent by the King of Assyria to re-people the deserted cities, complaining to their monarch of the ravages of these beasts which, as they put it, had been sent “because they knew not the manner of the God of the land.” As to the favourite haunts of the Lion in the various countries where it exists, “that Lions exist in the desert,” says M. Carette, “is a myth popularised by the dreams of artists and poets, and has no foundation but in their imagination. This animal does not quit the mountains where it finds shelter, food, and drink. When the traveller questions the natives concerning these wild beasts, which Europeans suppose to be their companions in the desert, they reply, with imperturbable _sangfroid_, ‘Have you, then, Lions in your country which can drink air and eat leaves? We fear only the viper, and, in humid spots, the innumerable swarms of mosquitos which abound there.’”[12] But the sacred writer makes him come up from the “swellings of Jordan;” and with Homer he is the Mountain Lion: the “artists and poets” of M. Carette are _moderns_, who know but little of the subject; not _ancients_ who were familiar with the beast.