THE FLESH-EATERS 33 



sufficiency of food, water, and suitable lurking-places, 

 the leopard may be met with in nearly every part of 

 the African continent. It is extremely partial to 

 mountain and hill country, where it establishes its 

 lair among the caves and holes of kloofs and rocky 

 mountain sides. Thick bush and forest, and the 

 jungly banks of rivers, are also favourite lurking- 

 places of this essentially nocturnal, shy, and secretive 

 animal. For their food, leopards prey mostly on 

 small antelopes, wild boars (warthog or bush-pig), 

 baboons, monkeys, rock-rabbits (dassies), guinea-fowl, 

 and other game birds. They create enormous havoc 

 among farmstock, and kill and devour calves, sheep, 

 goats, and even good-sized colts. Years ago, when 

 living in a wild mountain region of Cape Colony 

 the Witteberg, on the Plessis river, between Aber- 

 deen and Willowmore the friends with whom I 

 stayed were greatly troubled by these animals. They 

 bred horses, and in the first season lost eight or nine 

 foals and colts, all killed by these fierce marauders. 

 Leopards were, in fact, very abundant and very daring 

 among these remote and secluded hills. Not a night 

 passed but we heard their weird cry from some kloof 

 in the vicinity. When the homestead was being 

 built, shortly before my arrival, the mason engaged 

 on the job happened to be at work on the upper 

 part of the walls ; looking down, he espied a leopard, 

 which had calmly entered the house and was making 

 a survey. The mason was alone and had no gun, 

 and as a leopard can climb a ladder or a wall as easily 

 as it can ascend a tree, he judged it the wiser course 



