THE LION 177 



Man-eating lions have always been fairly common in 

 East Africa. The most noted, but far from exceptional, 

 case was that of the two man-eaters which for a time 

 stopped the building of the Uganda Railroad by their rav- 

 ages among the workmen, until they were finally shot by 

 the engineer in charge, Mr. Patterson. Another lion, after 

 killing several men around a station on the railroad, carried 

 off and ate the superintendent of the division; the latter had 

 come down in his private car, which was run on a siding, 

 and he sat up at a window that night to watch for the lion ; 

 but he fell asleep and the lion climbed on the platform, 

 entered the car by the door, and carried off his would-be 

 slayer through the window. In the summer of 1909 a 

 couple of man-eating lions took to infesting the Masai vil- 

 lages on the plain around the headwaters of the Guaso 

 Nyiro, west of Kenia, and by their ravages forced the Masai 

 to abandon the district, and the native travel routes across 

 it were also temporarily closed. A few weeks later we were 

 hunting in the district; we kept the thorn boma round our 

 camp closed at night, with a fire burning and askaris on 

 guard, and were not molested. Near Machakos Boma a 

 white traveller was taken out of his tent by a man-eater one 

 night a good many years ago; a grewsome feature of the 

 incident was that on its first attempt the lion was driven 

 off, after having seized and wounded its victim ; the wounds 

 of the latter were dressed, and he was again put to bed, but 

 soon after he had been left alone the lion again forced its 

 way into the tent and this time carried the man off and ate 

 him. Every year in East Africa natives are carried off from 

 their villages or from hunting camps by man-eating lions. 

 Occasionally one hears of man-eating leopards, which usu- 



