104 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



noticed, too, that in the wilds hyaenas will often, 

 though not always, pass the carcase of a freshly 

 killed lion without touching it. 



In any part of the country, however, where there 

 is a considerable native population, and where con- 

 sequently there is little or no game, hyaenas have 

 no fear or suspicion of a dead man. They make 

 their living out of the natives round whose villages 

 they patrol nightly. They soon discover any weak 

 spot in the pens where the goats, sheep, or calves 

 are kept, and kill and carry off numbers of these 

 animals. They often, too, kill full-grown cows by 

 tearing their udders open and then disembowelling 

 them, and will sometimes enter a hut, the door of 

 which has been left open, and make a snap at the 

 head of a sleeping man or woman, or carry off a 

 child. When lying once very weak and ill with 

 fever in a hut in a small Banyai village near the 

 Zambesi, I awoke suddenly and saw a hyaena 

 standing in the open doorway, through which the 

 moon was shining brightly. I lay quite still and 

 he came right inside, but he heard me moving as I 

 caught hold of my rifle, and bolted out, carrying with 

 him a bundle tied up with raw hide thongs. The 

 latter he afterwards ate, but we recovered the 

 contents of the bundle the next morning. 



Besides being able to dig up the carelessly buried 

 bodies of natives who have died a natural death, the 

 customs of some of the warlike tribes used to pro- 

 vide hyaenas with many a dainty meal. In 1873 

 my old friend the late Mr. Frank Mandy — after- 

 wards for so many years the manager of De Beers 

 Compound at Kimberley — saw some natives drag- 

 ging, with thongs attached to the wrists, what he 

 thought was a dead body across the stony ground 

 outside the native town of Bulawayo.^ On going 



^ The original native town built by Lo Bengula in 1 870, about twelve miles 

 from the present European city. 



