96 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



number had been killed by a lion, travel more than 

 twenty miles without feeding, evidently in a state 

 of terror all the time. On the other hand, I was 

 lying in my blankets at my camp on the Hanyani 

 river, in Mashunaland, one day early in 1885, just 

 in the throes of a sharp attack of fever and ague, 

 when my cattle-herd came rushing in, saying that 

 there was a lion amongst my cattle, and that it was 

 killing a heifer. This was about two o'clock in the 

 afternoon. Pulling myself together, I had one of 

 my horses saddled up, and calling my dogs, rode 

 out to see what had happened. I found my cattle, 

 over fifty altogether in number, all feeding quietly 

 not 400 yards away from my camp, just where they 

 were, my herd-boy said, when the lion came amongst 

 them. As it turned out, it was a lioness. She had 

 clawed a three-year-old heifer in the flanks and on 

 the hind-quarters, but had either been kicked off 

 by the heifer itself or driven off by the rest of the 

 herd. At any rate, the sudden appearance of this 

 lioness in their midst had created no panic amongst 

 the cattle. I had a chase after this lioness with 

 my dogs, but she crossed the river and got into 

 some very thick bush, and as I could not get a 

 sight of her and was feeling very unwell, I returned 

 to camp. 



In 1887, one day about noon, four lions — two 

 males and two females — attacked my oxen and 

 killed two of them, but without apparently alarming 

 the others in the slightest degree, as they never 

 ran away nor showed any sign of having been 

 frightened. One dark night early in 1892, I was 

 camped near the Revue river, in South-East Africa, 

 and my oxen were lying loose round the waggon, 

 as I thought there were no lions in the neighbour- 

 hood. About midnight five lions came up to 

 reconnoitre, and my oxen no doubt smelt them, for 

 they jumped up and stampeded in a body. As 



