76 IN BRIGHTEST AFRICA. 
two lions rushed out and escaped us. The lioness, 
more seriously wounded than I thought, never came. 
I had failed to get a lion, but I felt satisfied none the 
less, because the lions had likewise failed to get me. 
That one moment in that day, when I saw the lioness 
in the air, I'll never forget, for I realized that death 
was but an instant away. 
‘From that time until now I have seen a great many 
lions, shot some, and handled nearly fifty specimens, 
so that I have made a fairly extended study of the 
measurements and anatomy of the king of beasts. I 
have tried also to study his living characteristics and 
habits, but that is much more difficult. After all, 
perhaps the most impressive thing about a lion is his 
foreleg. The more you know of elephants the more 
you regard the elephant’s trunk. The more you 
know of lions, the more you respect the lion’s foreleg 
and the great padded and clawed weapon at the end 
of it. It is perhaps the best token of the animal’s 
strength. It is probably two or three times as power- 
ful in proportion to weight as the arm of aman. He 
can kill a man with one blow of his paw. His other 
weapon, his jaw, is strong enough to break a zebra’s 
neck at one bite. These are a rather rough measure 
of an animal’s strength, but they give some idea 
of it. 
There is a record which says that a lion has dragged 
an African buffalo fifty yards. A buffalo weighs 
at least three times as much as a lion. I have never 
had evidence of this much “pulling power” but I have 
known of many instances of lions dragging zebras 
