-♦5 



More Lion-Hunting Experiences 



use of strychnine, with which they have poisoned the 

 remains of animals l<;illed by hons. 



In 1900 I had an encounter with three Hons, which 

 might easily have proved fatal to me. After a march of 

 nearly ten hours in the driest season, my caravan had 

 come to the foot of a hill and my tired men had pitched 

 camp. Following the course of a stream, I went out for 

 a short walk round the camp, armed, contrary to my 

 usual custom, with only a fowling-piece. A number of 

 bald fruit-pigeons (J'iiiago caha nudirostris) presently 

 caught my attention, and I went after several, which 

 were perched upon the branches of a lot of fruit-trees in 

 the thick brushwood of the river-banks. Thus occupied 

 I had strayed about a thousand paces from the camp, 

 which was now out of sight. The pigeons were very shy. 

 Suddenly I came upon the tracks of several lions. 



Almost involuntarily I followed these for a couple of 

 hundred yards or so, and was just about to make my way 

 down into the dried-up bed of a freshet, which acts as a 

 tributary to the stream in the rainy season, when I became 

 conscious of a shadow to my left. Turning round, I beheld 

 a lioness twenty-five paces off, eyeing me quietly. She 

 stood in a small glade in the thorn-thicket, and I concluded 

 that she had made a resting-place for herself among the 

 dense green grass by the side of the stream. Almost simul- 

 taneously I saw, six or eight paces from her, two other lions 

 moving forward, half covered by the grass. All three 

 formed a most impressive sight, witnessed thus from so near. 



For several seconds neither I nor the lions made a 

 move — I bitterly regretting that I had brought only my 



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