With Flashlight and Rifle ^ 



taken by me in the three nights all made their way into the 

 stomachs of my Wanyamwesi, although their chief man 

 declared to me, when the seventh lion was finished, that 

 he thouo-ht he would like some other sort of vension for 

 a change ! A new case of toujours pcrdrix ! We brought 

 away with us in gourds, however, a supply of the surplus 

 fat from the lions, and it served for quite a long time as a 

 much relished delicacy. Almost on the same spot where 

 I had killed the nine lions, I tried a year later to get hold 

 of an old lioness accompanied by several small cubs ; judging 

 by the tracks on three successive nights, the whole family 

 visited the neighbourhood of my traps without, however, 

 paying any attention to the bait. 



It was long my keen desire to bring back to Europe a 

 full-grown lion alive, and the Berlin ZooloQ^ical Gardens 

 had been good enough to place at my disposal for this 

 purpose several transportable cases, capable of being taken 

 to pieces ; however, the impossibility of g<,^tting bearers to- 

 carry an iron chest itself weighing 500 lb. all the way from 

 the wilderness to the coast, obliged me to give up all hope 

 of this. Since the days of the Romans this feat has never 

 been achieved. All the lions that have been brought to- 

 Europe have been caught young, and have been brought 

 up in captivity, including the so-called forest-bred lions and 

 those presented as gifts by Oriental rulers. So far as I 

 know, we are without information as to the means by which 

 the ancients got possession of the great number of lions 

 which made their appearance in the arena. Hundreds of 

 lions were sometimes killed in the arena in a single show, 

 though a good many of these may have been young ones. 



396 



