256 LARGE GAME. chap. v. 



devoid of a resident population, and teeming with game, 

 had become notorious from attacking hunters' camps. The 

 district in which the former committed his depredations 

 was in the north-east corner of Zululand, where a number 

 of refugee Amaswazi had been located, and when I arrived 

 they had been continued for nearly a year, so that many 

 villages had been entirely deserted, and all had more or 

 less suffered ; for the brute did not confine himself to any 

 one in particular, nor come at any regular intervals, but 

 so timed his visits that no one was sure of his or her hfe 

 from day to day. No fastenings were of any use against 

 him, as his immense strength enabled him to force an 

 entrance if he could not find one ready made, while the 

 outer ring-fence of interwoven thorns supported by strong 

 posts which guards all native villages, and is often of 

 gi'eat height j offered no obstacle to his powers of jumping, 

 a single bound being always sufficient to land him inside. 



He usually confined himself to killing a single indi- 

 vidual, and would claw one out from under the blanket or 

 skin under wliich, with covered heads, they cowered with 

 terror on his arrival, but on the two or three occasions on 

 which he had met with opposition, and when he had been 

 woimded with assagais, he had killed every soul in the 

 hut, and so di^eadfully mangled them that their bodies 

 almost defied recognition. 



I was staying at these villages for some weeks, first at 

 one and then at another, as they suited the position of the 

 game, or where I happened to find myself at dusk ; but, 

 although I several times heard of the lion having attacked 

 one either just before or just after I had been there, I 

 never happened to meet it, and the ignorant natives 



