THE LEOPARD. ‘167 
It may be said, and with some truth, that when hunting and shooting are made the 
regular business of life, and more important pursuits neglected, we are merely expending 
our abilities and sacrificing our energies upon a frivolous ‘pleasure. These objections may 
certainly have some weight when they are directed against those who devote the whole of 
their time to mere sporting matters in such a place as England, where field sports should 
merely be taken up as a relaxation, and as a means of obtaining exercise and skill in those 
affairs which make an individual “more of a man.” But these requirements cannot he 
employed against those who, haying a great amount of leisure, occupy their time in hunting 
such animals as are to be found in India and Africa, and of ridding the country of man- 
eating tigers and lions, destructive Leopards, or other dangerous and formidable neighbours, 
—and even when engaged in the pursuit of less noble game. The African sportsman is 
either providing himself and his servants with venison, or is enabled to feéd whole families 
of hunery Kaffirs, who have fasted from meat for many days. 
To shoot or capture a Leopard is therefore useful as well as eratifying, and we shall be 
sure when we catch one of these beasts to have the opportunity of punishing either an 
old offender or one that is likely to become so. 
When the Leopard has committed many deeds of rapine in one loeality, he often 
appears to think it better to decamp and try some far-removed scene of operations. 
A HOUSE some few miles from Natal had been frequently visited by a Leopard, which 
had carried off a dog, chickens innumerable, and a pig. To support a Leopard with so 
promiscuous and extravagant an appetite was rather unsatisfactory. So the combined 
intellect of three individuals plotted a trap for this robber, and an old hen was the bait. 
Searcely had the night begun when a great cackling and various sounds of alarm were 
heard proceeding from the ancient fowl. She had been fastened on to the perch by some 
string, and it would be necessary for the Leopard to pull her off the perch before he let 
drop the door of the trap. The ordinary mouse-trap principle had been adopted, and the 
top of the cage secured by planks, on each end of which iron half-hundred weights were 
placed. The planks were also laid so close together that there was no room for a paw 
to be inserted, and the sides of the trap being made of stout stakes driven some feet into 
the ground, and lashed together at the top and bottom, made a very secure prison. 
The Leopard was too cunning on the first occasion that he paid this trap a visit, and 
would not touch the hen; but a few nights afterwards he came again, seized the hen, and 
became a prisoner. I was told that when first trapped he was furious, and made the most 
frantic efforts to escape, trymg, but vainly, to force the stakes asunder. Upon the 
appearance of a man, he became sullen and quiet, and slunk growling into the corner of 
his cage. 
I visited him the morning after his capture, and was received with the most villainous 
grins and looks. He could not endure being stared at, and tried every plan to hide his 
eyes so that he need not see his persecutor. When every other plan failed, he would 
pretend to be looking at some distant object, as though he did not notice his enemy close 
to him. When I gazed steadily at him he could not keep up this acting for longer than a 
minute, when he would suddenly turn and rush at me until he dashed himself against the 
bars, and found that he was powerless to revenge himself. 
Several Kaftirs who had suffered from his depredations visited him, and exhausted 
their abusive vocabulary by the epithets which they hurled at his devoted head. Even 
the civilized man finds it difficult to restrain his triumph over a fallen but dreaded foe, 
and the savage has no compunction about the matter. Around the cage, therefore, the 
Kaffirs are seated, and address the Leopard in the following terms :— 
“You rascally cowardly dog! you miserable eater of chickens! so you are caught, are 
you? Do you remember the red ‘and white calf you killed last moon? That calf was 
mine, you coward! Why didn’t you wait until I came with my assagies and sticks? But 
we let you eat it that your skin might be more sleek when you were killed!” “Look 
at my assagy,” says another; “I will strike it into your heart as I now do into the 
