60 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



camps have been established, where those stricken by the 

 dread malady can be isolated and cease to be possible 

 sources of infection to their fellows. Recovery among 

 those stricken is so rare as to be almost unknown, but the 

 disease is often slow, and months may elapse during which 

 the diseased man is still able to live his life much as usual. 

 In the big camps of doomed men and women thus estab- 

 lished there were, therefore, many persons carrying on 

 their avocations much as in an ordinary native village. 

 But the hyenas speedily found that in many of the huts the 

 inmates were a helpless prey. In 1908 and throughout 

 the early part of 1909 they grew constantly bolder, haunt- 

 ing these sleeping-sickness camps, and each night enter- 

 ing them, bursting into the huts and carrying off and eating 

 the dying people. To guard against them each little group 

 of huts was inclosed by a thick hedge; but after a while 

 the hyenas learned to break through the hedges, and con- 

 tinued their ravages; so that every night armed sentries had 

 to patrol the camps, and every night they could be heard fir- 

 ing at the marauders. 



The men thus preyed on were sick to death, and for 

 the most part helpless. But occasionally men in full vigor 

 are attacked. One of Pease's native hunters was seized 

 by a hyena as he slept beside the camp-fire, and part of 

 his face torn off. Selous informed me that a friend of his, 

 Major R. T. Coryndon, then administrator of Northwestern 

 Rhodesia, was attacked by a hyena but two or three years 

 ago. At the time Major Coryndon was lying, wrapped in 

 a blanket, beside his wagon. A hyena, stealthily approach- 

 ing through the night, seized him by the hand, and dragged 

 him out of bed; but as he struggled and called out, the 



