<P> The Cowardly Lion makes his first appearance in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . He is the last of the companions Dorothy befriends on her way to the Emerald City where he ambushes her, Toto, Scarecrow, and Tin Woodman . When he tries to bite Toto, Dorothy slaps him for trying to attack Toto where she discovers that the Lion is actually a coward which he admits that he is . The Cowardly Lion joins her so that he can ask The Wizard for courage, being ashamed that, in his cultural role as the King of the Beasts, he is not indeed brave . Despite outward evidence that he is unreasonably fearful, The Cowardly Lion displays great bravery along the way . During the journey, he leaps across a chasm on the road of yellow brick multiple times, each time with a companion on his back, and then leaps back to get the next one . When they come into another, wider chasm, the Cowardly Lion holds off two Kalidahs while the Tin Woodman cuts a tall tree to cross it . In spite of his fears, he still goes off to hunt for his food, and he even offers to kill a deer for Dorothy to eat, but the idea makes her uncomfortable . </P> <P> The Wizard gives him a dish of unknown liquid, telling him it is "courage" to drink . In the remainder of the book, the Lion becomes almost like a bully and ready to fight . He accompanies Dorothy on her journey to see Glinda, and allows his friends to stand on his back in order to escape the Dainty China Country, where he damages the only church mentioned in an Oz book until Handy Mandy in Oz (1937). </P> <P> His favored companion is the Hungry Tiger . This may well be the "Biggest of the Tigers" he and his friends encounter in the Forest of Wild Beasts in the Quadling Country In this forest, all of the lions and many of the other animals have been eaten by a Giant Spider . The Lion finds the Giant Spider asleep and decapitates it . The Tiger and the other animals bow to him and ask him to be their king, and he promises to do so upon his return from accompanying Dorothy to Glinda . Glinda orders the Winged Monkeys to carry him back to the Forest once Dorothy has returned home . </P> <P> In the rest of Baum's Oz series, the Lion never again played a major role . In later books, The Cowardly Lion often accompanies Dorothy on her adventures . He is Princess Ozma's chief guardian on state occasions, and he and the Hungry Tiger pull Ozma's chariot . In subsequent Oz books by Baum, the Lion was shown to have continued being courageous and loyal, although still considering himself a coward and regularly frightened, even by Aunt Em . He befriended the Hungry Tiger in Ozma of Oz, if this was not the earlier Tiger (which The Patchwork Girl of Oz implies that it is by calling both Lion and Tiger "largest of their kind"), and the two have become Ozma's personal guards . In Glinda of Oz he is on Ozma's board of advisers . </P>

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