among the hills are the fearless Ghoorkha leopards; and in the broken lowlands along the river that stout old Rohilla thakoor, the wild boar, resents all royal interference. The lion, again, they say, is king in Africa, yet the gorilla Zulus it over the forests within the lion’s territory; the ostrich on the plain despises all his mandates, and in the earldom of the rivers the crocodile cares nothing for his favor or his wrath. The lion, indeed, claims to be king of the beasts; but, loud as his roar is, it does not quite reach across the Atlantic, and we find the puma not only asserting leonine authority, but actually usurping the royal title as “the American lion;” just as in Africa, under the lion’s very nose, the leopard claims an equality of power by calling itself “the tiger.” The polar bear can command no homage from the walrus, nor the grizzly bear levy taxes from the bison. The python, “the emperor” of Mexican folk-lore, has none to attack him, but on the other hand, he does not venture to treat the jaguar as a serf.
Among the birds of the air, though eagles are kings, the raven asserts a melancholy supremacy over the solitudes of wildernesses, and the albatross is monarch of the waves. No one will deny the aristocracy of the flamingo, the bustard, or the swan, or dispute the nobility of the ibis on the Nile, or of the birds of Paradise in their leafy Edens of the Eastern Seas. For pretenders to high place we have the peacock and the vulture; and as democrats, to incite the proletariat of fowldom to disaffection and even turbulence, we need not search further than the crows.
In the sea, the Kraken is king. It is the hierophant of the oceanic mysteries, secret as a Prince of the Assassins or Veiled Prophet, and sacred from its very
