Ill DEFENCE AGAINST LIONS 53 



Urged on by its desperate need, such a lion knows 

 no fear, and will not hesitate to enter a small native 

 village or even to force its way into a hut in search 

 of food. 



In 1879, whilst hunting elephants in the country 

 to the east of the Chobi or Quito river, I met with 

 a very primitive tribe of natives living in families 

 or very small communities in isolated villages along 

 the bank of the river. Their huts were of the 

 flimsiest description, being formed of a light frame- 

 work of poles, over which a few grass mats had 

 been stretched ; but the two or three, up to half a 

 dozen, ill-made huts which formed each village were 

 always surrounded and protected by a carefully 

 made stockade, the poles forming which were all 

 sharpened at the end and hardened by having been 

 charred in the fire, and so placed that they slanted 

 outwards and would have been very difficult to 

 surmount from the outside. The natives informed 

 me that they had taken this trouble as a defence 

 against lions. 



One morning, in this same district, I came upon 

 most of the skeleton of a man who had been killed 

 and eaten by a lion a few days before. He had 

 evidently been sitting or lying by a fire when 

 caught, and had probably been overtaken by 

 darkness when on his way from one village to 

 another. This man's spears lay close to his bones, 

 so that he must have been holding them in his 

 hand when he was seized. None of my Kafirs 

 would touch them. Apparently it was not etiquette 

 to meddle with the belongings of a dead man, 

 though I think that most of the members of my 

 retinue would not have been above stealing anything 

 they might have found lying about, belonging to a 

 live one. 



In April 1878 a lion entered a small Banyai 

 village near the river Umay, in Northern Matabele- 



