444 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



presently they roared again, evidently nearer ; then 

 again and again, but always getting nearer, till there 

 was no doubt that they were coming down to drink 

 at the water, close to which we were encamped. 

 The night was intensely dark, as the sky was over- 

 cast and the moon did not rise till late. At length 

 the lions reached the water just beneath us, having 

 roared grandly at intervals of ten minutes or so, 

 ever since we first heard them. The noise they 

 made was truly appalling, for as our camp was just 

 on the top of a steep bank underneath which was 

 the pool of water, we could not have been more 

 than fifteen yards from them. We had scarcely any 

 fire, and being surrounded by bush, what we had 

 threw no light over the water, so that I do not think 

 the lions had any idea of our near proximity. When 

 they were drinking we could hear them lapping the 

 water quite plainly. They roared three times just 

 beneath us, before taking their departure. One 

 would commence, then a second join in, then a 

 third, and at the time when they were all roaring at 

 once, the effect was most grand, not to say awful. 

 I think there must have been four of them. Upon 

 several previous occasions I have heard lions roar 

 very close to me, but never quite so close as upon 

 this occasion. Surely nothing can be more unjust 

 and misleading than to compare the voice of the 

 lion to the sound emitted by the ostrich, as Dr. 

 Livingstone does in his very one-sided description 

 of the former animal. The booming noise made by 

 the cock ostrich during the breeding season sounds, 

 at a distance of fifty yards, very like the roar of a 

 lion heard at a distance of three miles ; but, ceteris 

 paribus^ the two notes are as different the one from 

 the other as those emitted by a concertina and a 



