"Gentlemen, I am glad that he got away!" he said to the other hunters. "I do not think that any man in history has ever charged sixty enemies single-handed, and has gained his purpose--to save the life of one dear to him." Then Prince Henry wiped his forehead, pretending that he had taken off his hat to do that! And so the famous tiger hunt was over. It often happens like that, in spite of sixty hunters and a thousand other men: five minutes of thrilling excitement--and then it is all over! I must tell you that if you go to hunt a tiger, even with all that preparation, you never really know whether you are going to hunt the tiger, or the tiger is going to _hunt you_! And if you do not have elephants to help you, the chances are that the tiger will hunt you. Men, with all their guns and other inventions, can in some cases be saved from some animals only by other animals--from tigers by elephants and buffaloes, as I have described to you. CHAPTER X The Lion I shall now tell you about other felines or animals of the Cat Tribe. The _lion_ looks the grandest of all such animals--I suppose just because he has a _mane_. Most lions live in Africa. There are some lions in Arabia and Persia, which are the two countries in Asia nearest to Africa. A few lions are also found in a jungle on the west side of India. These lions in the countries of Asia are not as big as the African lion. Then there is also a species of lion in America, though he has no mane. He is called the _puma_; but people in the Western states often call him a _cougar_ or mountain lion. The puma is found chiefly in North America; he is also found in Central and South America, but not so often. In the United States the puma lives mostly in the mountains of the Far West. He is very fond of deer flesh; and as there are still plenty of deer in the forest reserves in the Far West, the puma has managed to survive there. But in the Middle West, where there are fewer deer, there are hardly any pumas. [Illustration: Group of Lions] [Illustration: Puma] The puma is seldom able to attack cattle. But when pressed by hunger in the winter, he sometimes descends from the mountains to the plains below, and tries at least to steal sheep from the farms. The puma usually avoids men, especially as the men there often carry guns. But still, when made desperate by hunger, the puma has even been known to attack a man on a lonely farm. In size this American lion, like the lions that live in Asia, is much smaller than the African lion. The African lion is the finest specimen of a lion. So I shall describe the African lion in particular. The African lion grows to be about three feet six inches high at the shoulders; but his big head stands up quite a foot higher, and makes him look very imposing. His body, without the tail, is about five and a half to six feet long. So the African lion is not quite so long as the Bengal tiger. Still, the lion is a splendid specimen of the Cat Tribe.