112 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



hyaenas in front of them, so that there must have 

 been more than twenty of these animals out on 

 the plain with the lionesses, two of which latter 

 I succeeded in shooting. After I had skinned 

 them, I rode back over the plain, but could dis- 

 cover no sign of the carcase of a dead animal, as 

 I should have done, had it been anywhere near, 

 by the flight of the vultures. Why had all these 

 hyaenas collected round these three lionesses, and 

 why were they escorting them back to the bush 

 again over the open plain ? I can only hazard 

 the suggestion that they had followed the lionesses 

 in the hope that they would kill some large animal, 

 whose bones they would then have picked after 

 the nobler animals had eaten their full. When I 

 heard them howling, perhaps they were upbraiding 

 the lionesses for their want of success. Hyaenas 

 do not live in packs, but when a large, animal 

 has been killed, they scent the blood from afar 

 and collect together for the feast, separating 

 and going off singly to their several lairs soon 

 after daybreak. The rapidity with which hyaenas 

 sometimes collect round a carcase is truly astonish- 

 ing, and shows how numerous these animals are in 

 countries where game is still plentiful. 



I remember arriving late one evening, in July 

 1873, at a small water-hole in the country to the 

 west of the river Gwai, in Matabeleland. I had left 

 my waggon at a permanent water called Linquasi 

 two days previously, but being only armed with two 

 four-bore muzzle-loading elephant guns, and not 

 having met with either elephants, rhinoceroses, or 

 buffaloes, was still without meat for myself and my 

 Kafirs, as, although I had seen giraffes, elands, and 

 other antelopes, I had not been able to get within 

 shot of any of these animals with the archaic 

 weapons which were the only firearms at that time 

 in my possession. 



