With Flashlight and Rifle ^ 



with which leopards move, either when attacking or in 

 full flight. Curious to relate, although these animals are 

 so common, I find, fi*om my diary, that I only met 

 them at close quarters twelve times — not counting the 

 numbers I have trapped. These encounters were always 

 sudden and unforeseen. 



Of peculiar interest was an encounter I had with a 

 leopard near the town ot Pangani, on the very day of 

 my setting out on my great expedition of 1899. Ac- 

 companied by only one man, I had returned to the 

 town to obtain some more reserve carriers. At the 

 head of these I was hurrying in the evening back to my 

 camp, when I suddenly became aware of the continuous 

 shrieking of a troop of baboons. From the cries and 

 shrieks of the apes I concluded that a leopard had 

 chased them, and, as some old and larQ-e male baboons 

 peered from a monkey-bread-tree into the underwood 

 close to our path, with signs of rage and cries of alarm, 

 I attempted to get nearer, my gun ready in my hand. 

 The underwood was almost impenetrable, and it seemed 

 to me as it the leopard must be busy tearing a baboon 

 to pieces under a baobab-tree. 



After a few steps in the direction of the monkeys, 

 I heard something make off in the jungle, and at the 

 same time the baboons clambered after it, whatever it 

 was, screaming and chattering, up in the safe altitudes ot 

 the tree-tops. As the thicket grew less dense I was able 

 to get along more quickly, and, just as I was descending 

 a glen, I noticed to the left, some thirty paces off, a 

 powerful leopard, which had killed a young baboon, and 



