THE LION 219 



jaws having been severed by the last bullet I had fired. 

 Within half a mile the dogs bayed him in dense brush. In 

 order to shoot the lion, Rainey had to approach within fif- 

 teen yards. He was also a fully grown male but maneless. 

 Upon examining his forepaws the marks of the jaws of the 

 trap were distinctly visible on the inner toe, the congested 

 condition of which upon skinning gave further proof of his 

 having been caught by that member. No growling was 

 indulged in by this lion during the night, absolute silence 

 being maintained. The failure of this lion to charge when 

 freed from the trap by my last shot is quite unaccountable, 

 as he had been put to several hours of irritation. 



" The next lion captured by the hyena traps was taken in 

 a very different region. While we were camped on the 

 lower Guaso Nyiro at the point where the Marsabit road 

 crosses the stream, one of the mules died of tsetse infection. 

 The country about this camp was a low, dry desert, intensely 

 hot, having an altitude of only two thousand feet. The 

 district was rather uniformly covered by a scattered growth 

 of acacias and wait-a-bit thorn-bushes. The body of the 

 mule lay half a mile away on the brush-covered plain. Near 

 it I placed some of the steel traps for the purpose of catch- 

 ing striped hyenas which were abundant in the vicinity. 

 Several days previously the mule had been guarded from the 

 vultures and spared for lion bait, but no lions ventured near. 

 On the night the traps were set two lions visited it, one of 

 which was captured. This lion gave us a long trail to fol- 

 low which wound about through the brush for a mile and a 

 half, and finally into a dense reed bed of tall bulrushes much 

 higher than our heads. My gun-bearers finally sighted the 

 tip end of the acacia-bush drag sticking out of the reed 

 patch. The lion had only entered the edge of the reeds, but 



