26 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



terror was established by man-eating lions on the. 

 Beira-Salisbury Railway during the middle 'nineties. 

 Here, too, many lives more than thirty were lost 

 among the native labourers. 



On dark stormy nights lions are more to be feared 

 than at any other time. If hungry, they will on such 

 a night dare almost anything, and neither fires nor 

 fire-arms will keep them off. In the Pungwe River 

 country, east of Mashonaland, lions were and still 

 are singularly bold and fearless of human beings. 

 Mr. Selous once spent one of the most exciting nights 

 of his existence in this country, with the object of 

 shooting a lion or lions which had been troubling 

 the vicinity. One of these animals had killed and 

 devoured a man here a short time previously. Shelter- 

 ing himself and his shooting comrade beneath a hut 

 or screen of thorns supported by poles, Selous took 

 up his station at dusk. Near them lay the carcase 

 of a dead ox. By seven o'clock lions were already 

 about them. Nor, in spite of the fact that the hunter 

 killed dead two of their number and wounded an- 

 other, did they quit the place, prowling round the 

 screen, and occasionally even trying to force their 

 way in, and devouring the dead ox within 6 feet 

 of the two white men. It was a sufficiently exciting 

 experience ; and if Selous had not shot and mortally 

 wounded one of the brutes as it attempted to force 

 its way into the light and precarious screen of thorns, 

 anything might have happened. 



Lions are hunted in various ways. The Boers 

 more usually prefer to tackle them in a body, 



