New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1860-04-09

| From aHemlock Sketches in Porter's Spirit of
the Times, we extract the following:
The victim was a young physician, who hung
out at the Blockhouse village and had, it is said
more love for, and more skill in, shooting than sur
1 gerry. Some ten or twelve miles from the Block
| house is place called the English Settlement
| and between the two places an unbroken forest
4 extends nearly the whole way; there is no road
through, but the settlers have stblazed line,''
! and on this line the Doctor started one Autumn
morning for the settlement. He took his gun, of
course, and also expressed an intention of being
absent week or more, # the hunting proved
good.
He was not expected at the settlement NOR did
he arrive there's but it happened that two or three
days afterwards man came through from the
latter place, and on being questioned by the doc
tors friends gave the rather startling information
that no doctor had arrived. AS ii was known he Il
took no camp impedments along, and was not
likely to have got lost, his friends, to the number
Of halta Dozen took their rifles and started for the
settlement, to see it out ]. They had not far to
go. He was lying few yards from the path,
frightfuly torn and mangled, one barrel discharg-
ed, and the cap of the other exploded with unnis-
taxable evidences Of fearful life and death strug-
gle on his person. The men who found him were
hunters, and they said " painter'' at once. There
was trail Of blood leading from the corpse to a
thicket, but the leaves were falling, and after 1
long trial, they could follow it nc longer
r. - worthy OF note that an old hunter of that
party gave it as his belief, after washing and
closely examining the corpse that the panther had
had his under jaw broken by the shot. and conse-
quently could not eat or bite the body. Good dors
were brought to the spot the day after the body
was found, but nothing came of it, and the concln-
sion was that the panther had orawled off to a
thcket and died of his wound; that it was pan
ther no one who saw the body or heard the story
even doubted
This was in November. In the April following.
some children, who had been playing in the road
at the settlement, rushed into house near by.
wild with alright, and attempting incoherently to
describe something of most fearful aspect, that
was trying to get over brush fence into the road
It's long as horse, and got bloody eyes ,, one
little fellow said.
The children were too much accustomed to the |
sight Of wild animals TO make such fuss without
cause, and couple of men, who heard the yarn.
started up the road Immediately to the spot indi-
Gated by the children. Sure enough, there was a |
gaunt, spectrelike skeleton, trying in q mannder-
fence into the road, falling on his side at times
from sheer exhaustion, and only able to regain his
feet after repeated trials; lettering and stumbling
at every slight obstruction in his path and totally
incapable of infictng injury on any living thing.
He was an object Of pity rather than fear.
II was ne panther. who had managed for five |
long months to keep himself alive without the least
assistance from his under jaw, which was hone
lessy shattered, and must have precluded the pos
sbilify of eating in the proper sense of the word
In his wounded and exhausted condition he must
have managed to exist by catching mice and s.snch
small deer as he could tuck into his throat with
paw, and swallow without mastication Death must
have been relief to him, and he suffered himself
to be knocked in the head without snarl. He was
large specimen, measuring nearly eleven feet
from Tip to tips and with his broken decaying jaw,
skin hanging loosely over the snakelike vertebrate |
and bloodshot, famished eyes, must have been q |
waking nightmare to look on.