Ill BUFFALO KILLED BY LION 59 



nection with the history of this notorious man- 

 eating lion which I omitted from the first account 

 I wrote of its doings, but which I will now relate, 

 as it is of interest. Soon after dark on the night 

 of the second attack on their camp, Henry Wall 

 and Jantje and all their boys heard the sudden rush 

 of an affriorhted herd of buffaloes, which had been 

 feeding in the open ground between their camp and 

 the Majili river. Suddenly there was the loud and 

 agonised bellow of a buffalo in pain and terror, 

 and they all knew that one of these animals had 

 been seized by a lion. The following morning they 

 found a buffalo cow lying dead not two hundred 

 yards from their camp, with its head twisted in 

 under it and its neck dislocated. It had the claw- 

 marks usual in such cases over the muzzle and on 

 the shoulder, showing the manner in which it had 

 been seized, but after having been killed it had not 

 been touched. The tracks of the lion, however, 

 led from the carcase of the buffalo to the hunters' 

 camp, and I think that there can be no doubt that 

 it was the same animal which killed the buffalo 

 that a few hours later carried off a human being. 

 If so, it proves two things. Firstly, that this man- 

 eating lion must have been in its prime, for it 

 requires a strong and vigorous male lion to kill a 

 full-grown buffalo cow or a heavy bullock neatly 

 and quickly by breaking its neck ; and secondly, 

 that it preferred human flesh to that of a buffalo. 

 It must either have seen the gleam of the camp 

 fires for the first time immediately after it had 

 killed the buffalo, and abandoned the carcase in 

 the hope of obtaining more succulent food, or, if 

 it was aware of the neighbourhood of the hunters' 

 camp before it attacked the buffalo, it must have 

 killed the latter out of sheer mischief. 



Though similar cases of lions becoming confirmed 

 man-eaters when in the orime of life and still in the 



