34 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



to keep quiet until the beast had taken its departure. 

 We had great trouble to keep down leopards among 

 the mountains. Occasionally a combined hunt was 

 got up with neighbouring farmers, and one or two of 

 the brutes were killed. But the Boers of the vicinity 

 were by no means keen to try conclusions with the 

 " tijger." A young Dutchman, shortly before my 

 arrival, had been terribly clawed in an encounter with 

 one of these carnivora and had died of his wounds, 

 and his fellows chose rather to achieve the downfall 

 of the leopards about them by means of strychnine 

 pills, inserted in the carcase of a dead kid, or in a 

 piece of flesh. "Poisoning clubs" exist all over 

 Cape Colony at the present day ; rewards are 

 offered, and leopards, caracals, the various wild 

 cats, genets, baboons, jackals, and so forth, are thus 

 kept under and destroyed. It is, of course, to be 

 remembered that all nocturnal animals are very 

 difficult to find in daylight, and the farmers for 

 their own protection are bound to resort to the use 

 of poison. 



It is a fact, not known to all naturalists and 

 hunters, that the leopard is in the habit of depositing 

 carcases of slain prey in the forks or branches of 

 some low tree, no great way from its cave or hiding- 

 place. Such a place is well known to Cape Colonists 

 as " the leopard's larder." The food often becomes 

 high and stinking, but the leopard, like the lion, is 

 not a specially clean feeder, and will devour a decay- 

 ing carcase as readily as will a hyasna or a vulture. 

 I well remember being shown one of these larders by 



