MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH LIONS 63 
_ grass down in front of us and then walk on it. We 
had made some progress in this manner when sud- 
denly, as we were pushing down the grass, it was 
thrown violently back, jerking our rifles up and almost 
throwing us over. It was the lioness. We had 
pressed the grass down right on her back. Yet de- 
spite this intrusion she made off and did not attack 
us. 
As she went out of the grass into the open, Stephen- 
son shot at her and missed. Some of the boys rode 
after her on horseback and rounded her up in another 
patch of cover. By this time, however, her patience 
had run out. She could have run some more had she 
wanted to, but she didn’t want to. When Stephen- 
son approached the cover with his gun boys she took 
the initiative and charged. His first shot stopped 
her a second, but she came on again. His second 
shot killed her. 
My first black-maned lion showed the same char- 
acteristics. He, too, preferred peace to war, although 
I originally disturbed him with his kill, but finally, 
when he declared war, although he was badly 
wounded, he preferred to charge two white men and 
thirty natives rather than try to escape. 
I had gone up on the Mau Plateau to shoot fopi. 
The plateau is about 8,000 feet above sea level there 
and I didn’t expect to find any lions. One day I 
discovered two opi in a little valley between two 
gentle rises. I was crawling up to the top of one of 
the rises overlooking the valley to get a shot when I 
noticed some movement in the grass on the slope 
