"When I got upon my feet, I put my gun down and looked for a big stone to finish the brute with. Not finding one, I was about to put my foot on its head and cut its throat, when the snake made another attack upon me, getting hold of my coat sleeve, and again pulling me to the ground. Once more it attempted to get its coils round me, but I escaped them. It still retained its bite on my sleeve, however. I managed to get my foot on its throat, which made it open its mouth. Then I got my arm free, and called for my friends again. One of them heard me and came running up. He saw that there had been a struggle, and shot the python through the head, thus putting the finishing touch to what was for me the narrowest shave I have ever had. It seems to me remarkable that I have felt no ill effects from the encounter beyond being a little short-winded and nervous for a few days." +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | _Guardians of the Wilderness._ | | | | +By Henry Hale.+ | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ The United States Government maintains a little army of twelve hundred men whose duty it is to look after the vast national forests, whose area is about five times that of Great Britain. Here, monarchs of all they survey, these rangers of the wild lead solitary and strenuous lives, sometimes not meeting a fellow human being for months on end. The United States Government maintains a curious little force of policemen who do not patrol posts in the cities or towns, but may well be called the guardians of the wilderness, for it is their business to look after vast forests where few human beings live. It may seem odd that it is necessary to have Nature's police to go here and there in the forests and amid the mountains, but it is very necessary in order to protect one of the great resources of America. Some of these rangers of the wild have "beats" so extensive that one man may be the sole protector of a miniature empire, comprising two hundred thousand acres of primeval forest. Mere figures cannot give the stay-at-home reader any adequate idea of the vastness of some of the great "reserves" in which the patrolmen live month after month. If the whole of London is measured it will be found to contain over seventy-five thousand acres, yet no fewer than eighty cities the size of London could easily be placed in a single one of the American "national parks." Washington Park, situated in the State of that name, and the greatest of them all, contains no less than ten thousand square miles of territory. [Illustration: A FOREST RANGERS' PACK-TRAIN ON THE TRAIL.