208 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



" Lions I " he cried, guardedly. " I went to 

 drink, and I saw four lions. Two were lying 

 under the shade, but two others were playing 

 like puppies, one on its back." 



While he was speaking a lioness wandered out 

 from the canon and up the opposite slope. She 

 was somewhere between six and nine hundred 

 yards away, and looked very tiny ; but the 

 binoculars brought us up to her with a jump. 

 Through them she proved to be a good one. She 

 was not at all hurried, but paused from time to 

 time to yawn and look about her. After a short 

 interval, another, also a lioness, followed in her 

 footsteps. She too had climbed clear when a 

 third, probably a full-grown but still immature 

 lion, came out, and after him the fourth. 



1 You were right," we told Memba Sasa, " there 

 are your four." 



But while we watched, a fifth, again at the 

 spaced interval, this time a maned lion, clamb- 

 ered leisurely up in the wake of his family ; and 

 after him another, and another, and yet an- 

 other ! We gasped, and sat down, the better to 

 steady our glasses with our knees. There seemed 

 no end to lions. They came out of that appar- 

 ently inexhaustible canon bed one at a time 

 and at the same regular intervals ; perhaps 



