Lions 
Walking to the prone beast, I found him stone 
dead, and after taking his head and neckskin and 
a plentiful supply of meat, I went back to camp. 
Throughout the night lions roared on every side 
of us—they seemed to collect together and voice 
their troubles in unison. There was but little 
hope of bagging His Majesty at this season. 
The grass had not been burnt, and everywhere it 
stood higher than a lion’s back. The one chance 
was to kill a buffalo as bait and then revisit the 
carcass at daybreak, when a lion would probably 
be found feeding. Not so easy as it sounds. 
The leaving of a dead beast was hard of accom- 
plishment. For almost as the breath left it 
hundreds of vultures, or aasvogels, appeared 
from all points, ready to break up and devour 
in an incredibly short space any carcass that 
might be to hand, and nothing but a few bones 
and skin would be left to attract anything. A 
buffalo bull’s skin is so tough that it alone could 
resist the onslaught of the scavengers. 
Though we wanted a buffalo badly we could 
not then come across one, although a small herd 
of two hundred regularly frequented these plains. 
Kopping accounted for their absence by saying 
that the wind had been blowing steadily from 
one quarter for some days, and that as these 
beasts feed up-wind they had wisely headed out 
of our immediate district. 
Kopping and I started out as soon as it was 
75 
