XIV THE BITE OF A LION 263 



able to follow over the limestone ; but about a mile 

 away on the other side of the pool we found the 

 stallion lying down, and soon discovered that he 

 had been both bitten and clawed during the night. 

 I believe that his assailant must have been a very 

 old and weakly lioness, which had found him lying 

 down and attacked him whilst he was in that 

 position. He had been somewhat severely bitten 

 in the back of the neck, and clawed on the left 

 shoulder and in both flanks, but being a very 

 powerful animal, he had managed to throw his 

 assailant off I at once syringed out the stallion's 

 wounds with a very strong cauterising solution of 

 carbolic acid, and they never sloughed at all, but 

 healed up very rapidly, though if the bite of a lion 

 is not cauterised it takes a long time to heal. 



The strangest part of this experience is that I 

 never saw or heard anything more of this lion or 

 lioness. With a dozen of the finest trackers in the 

 world to help me, nothing could be done on the 

 hard limestone ground, which in one direction ex- 

 tended for miles ; nor, though I remained in the 

 same camp for a week, did the baffled beast ever 

 make any further attempt to interfere with my cattle. 

 Possibly the stallion, after shaking his assailant off, 

 had given him or her a kick. The Bushmen told 

 me that this was the first lion that had visited the 

 neighbourhood of their camp for years, though a lion 

 and lioness had together killed a cow giraffe near 

 another permanent water, some thirty miles to the 

 west, about a month before. No doubt the brute that 

 had attacked my stallion — probably an old and half- 

 famished lioness — had come a long way on the spoor 

 of my cattle. 



I secured my most beautiful gemsbuck head in 

 April 1888, in the desert country between the lower 

 course of the Nata river and the northern extremity 

 of the great Makari-kari Salt-pan. 



