The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 
with the hope that I should surprise lions making 
a meal of one of them. I had purposely come 
away from my main camp so that I should be 
nearer and able to visit the kills more regularly, 
I regret to say without success. The carcasses 
got more highly scented daily, until I really 
could not face them any longer. We, of course, 
had to come up-wind to them, consequently 
getting the whole force of the smell. 
Early on the last morning at the lagoons I had 
the camp struck after we had left, meaning not to 
return to this place, but to rejoin the permanent 
camp. We had nearly reached the place where our 
first dead buffalo lay when I saw a lion galloping 
as hard as he could travel down the centre of an 
open spot. He was at least three hundred yards 
away, so that a shot was out of the question. — 
I had therefore the mortification of seeing him 
disappear into some reeds in the distance. This 
was the only lion I saw quite in the open, and 
although I spent the early mornings looking 
solely for them, I never got even a shot at one, 
which only goes to prove that in a more or less 
densely covered reed country the words “‘chance”’ 
and ‘‘ luck” have an important bearing on the — 
result of one’s labours. I should, were I to have 
the good fortune to revisit this part of Africa, 
take with me from Durban a pack of dogs. I 
think that then success might be assured, the only 
drawback to the scheme being that the tsetse fly 
130 
