[ Ballantyne / Hunting the Lions ]
R. M. Ballantyne (1825 - 1894) was a popular and prolific Scottish writer of adventure tales for boys, and was a significant influence on Robert Louis Stevenson. Ballantyne, from a family of writers and publishers, was also a painter of some note.
This novelized treatment of lion-hunting in Africa was first published in 1869 by James Nisbet, London.
There is only one reference to Newfoundland dogs:
We, however, readily believe the great traveller when he tells us that nothing he ever heard of the lion led him to ascribe to it a noble character, and that it possesses none of the nobility of the Newfoundland or St. Bernard Dogs. (Ch. 5)