112 Wild Beasts 



impossible to suppose that an animal which, above all 

 others, except the tiger, is specialized for violence, will not 

 be blood-thirsty and aggressive. 



Sir Samuel Baker appears to be the only writer, really 

 an authority, who knows nothing authentic and has no per- 

 sonal cognizance of the forays of lions upon villages and 

 camps. Delgorgue, Harris, Gumming, Andersson, and 

 everybody else whose opportunities for observation have 

 been at all extensive, recognize such incidents as perfectly 

 well established. Indeed, taking the character of this 

 beast and its situation into consideration, the only thing 

 surprising about the matter would be that it had not done 

 those things upon whose reality Baker seems to cast a 

 doubt. Drummond relates a story in this connection, in 

 the scenes of which he was himself an actor, and as many 

 of those traits which have been discussed are well brought 

 out in his narrative, it is given in full. 



" In two cases I have been an accessory to the death of 

 well-known man-eaters, one of which had almost depopu- 

 lated a district. . . . The locality in which this one com- 

 mitted his depredations was in the northeast corner of 

 Zululand, where a number of refugee Amaswazi had been 

 located, and when I arrived they had continued for nearly 

 a year, so that many villages were deserted, and all had 

 more or less suffered ; for the brute did not confine him- 

 self to any one in particular, nor come at any regular in- 

 tervals, but so timed his visits that no one was sure of his 

 or her life from day to day. No fastenings were of any 

 use against him, as his immense strength enabled him to 

 force an entrance if he could not find one ready made, 



