CH. XII] LORD DELAMP:RE'S ranch 355 



home ranch was most attractive — especially the library, 

 the room containing Lady Delamere's books. Delamere 

 liad been himself a noted big-game himter, his bag 

 including fifty-two lions ; but instead of continuing to 

 be a mere sportsman, he turned his attention to stock- 

 raising and wheat-growing, and became a leader in the 

 work of taming the wilderness, of conquering for 

 civilization the world's waste spaces. No career can be 

 better worth following. 



During his hunting years Delamere had met with 

 many strange adventures. One of the lions he shot 

 mauled him, breaking his leg, and also mauling his two 

 Somali gun-bearers. The lion then crawled off into 

 some bushes fifty yards away, and camp was pitched 

 where tiie wounded men were lying. Soon after night- 

 fall the liyenas assembled in numbers, and attacked, 

 killed, and ate the mortally wounded lion, the noise 

 made by the combatants being ear-rending. On another 

 occasion he had heard a leopard attack some baboons in 

 the rocks, a tremendous row following as the big dog 

 baboons hastened to the assistance of the one who had 

 been seized, and drove off the leopard. That evening 

 a leopard, evidently the same one, very thin and hungry, 

 came into camp and was shot ; it was frightfully bitten, 

 the injuries being such as only baboons inflict, and 

 would unquestionably have died of its wounds. The 

 leopard, wherever possible, takes his kill up a tree, 

 showing extraordinary strength in the performance of 

 this feat. It is undoubtedly due to fear of interference 

 from hyenas. The Ndorobo said that no single hyena 

 ^\ould meddle with a leopard, but that three or four 

 would without hesitation rob it of its prey. Some 

 years before this time, while hunting north of Kenia, 

 Lord Delamere had met a Dr. Kolb, who was killed by 



