LIONS SI 



The rifles were in another part of the building, 

 and, as neither of the men dared to venture out 

 of his room, they had to content themselves 

 with shouting to each other through the parti- 

 tion and let the lion depart at his will, which he 

 did in a few hours' time. 



In the N'Guasso Nyero country we met a 

 Boer who was travelling through the land trad- 

 ing cattle with the Masai. Not long before this 

 a lion had crept up to his camp one night and 

 sprung at a sleeping ox driver. The boy was 

 covered with two pairs of blankets, and in its 

 haste to escape the lion made a hurried grab 

 and ran off with the blankets only. 



In the same locality lions once chased a zebra 

 up to a settler's house and killed it within fifty 

 feet of his door-step. There were four or five 

 lions in the bunch, and, though the man used 

 up all of his ammunition trying to kill them or 

 frighten them away, he was compelled to lie in 

 bed most of the night listening to them. We 

 met the same man a few weeks after leaving 

 the region and he told us that he had come to 

 Nairobi to buy a horse to replace one that lions 

 had killed in broad daylight the day before and 

 within a stone's throw of his house and our old 

 camping site. 



