LEOPARDS AND RHINOS 103 
arrival on my first trip to Africa. I have seen a lot 
of leopards since and occasionally killed one, but 
I have taken pains never to attempt it at such close 
quarters again. In spite of their fighting qualities 
I have never got to like or respect leopards very much. 
This is not because of my misadventure; I was hurt 
much worse by an elephant, but I have great respect 
and admiration for elephants. I think it is because 
the leopard has always seemed to me a sneaking 
kind of animal, and also perhaps because he will 
eat carrion even down to a dead and diseased hyena. 
A day or two before my experience with the leopard 
someone else had shot a hyena near our camp and 
had left him over night. The next morning the dead 
hyena was lodged fifteen feet from the ground in the 
crotch of a tree at some distance from where he was 
killed. A leopard, very possibly my enemy, had 
dragged him along the ground and up the tree and 
placed him there for future use. While such activi- 
ties cannot increase one’s respect for the taste of 
leopards, they do give convincing evidence of the 
Seopard’s strength, for the hyena weighed at least as 
much as the leopard. 
The leopard, like the elephant, is at home in every 
kind of country in East Africa—on the plains, among 
the rocky hills, among the bamboo, and in the forest 
all the way up to timber line on the equatorial moun- 
tains. Unlike the lion, the leopard is a solitary beast. 
Except for a mother with young, I have never seen as 
many as two leopards together. It is my belief that 
like the lion they do their hunting at night almost 
