62 LION-HUNTING [ch. hi 



slain or disabled. Among those competent to express 

 judgment there is the widest difference of opinion as to 

 the comparative danger in hunting the several kinds of 

 animals. Probably no other hunter who has ever lived 

 has combined Selous's experience with his skill as a 

 hunter and his power of accurate observation and narra- 

 tion. He has killed between three and four hundred lions, 

 elephants, buffaloes, and rhinos, and he ranks the lion as 

 much the most dangerous, and the rhino as much the 

 least, while he puts the buffalo and elephant in between, 

 and practically on a par. Governor Jackson has 

 killed between eighty and ninety of the four animals ; 

 and he puts the bufialo unquestionably first in point of 

 formidable capacity as a foe, the elephant equally un- 

 questionably second, the lion third, and the rhino last. 

 Stigand puts them in the following order : lion, elephant, 

 rhino, leopard, and buffalo. Drummond, who wrote a 

 capital book on South African game, who was for 

 years a professional hunter like Selous, and who had 

 fine opportunities for observation, but who was a much 

 less accurate observer than Selous, put the rhino as un- 

 questionably the most dangerous, with the lion as second, 

 and the buffalo and elephant nearly on a level. Samuel 

 Baker, a mighty hunter and good observer, but with less 

 experience of African game tiian any one of the above, 

 put the elephant first, the rhino second, the buffalo seem- 

 ingly third, and the lion last. The experts of greatest 

 experience thus absolutely disagree among themselves ; 

 and there is the same wide divergence of view among 

 good hunters and trained observers whose oppor- 

 tunities have been less. Mr, Abel Chapman, for 

 instance, regards both the elephant and the rhino as 

 more dangerous than the lion, and many of the hunteis 

 I met in East Africa seemed inclined to rank the buffalo 



