ACROSS THE MAU ESCARPMENT 73 
them in is long-grass country, for the wide grass trail of 
the big, low body is easiest of all tracks to follow, I would 
have gone after them as long as my knee held out. Still, 
at that time, I could walk but little, and most probably 
they would not have given me a chance. As it was, I had 
to content myself with a good view of the splendid beasts 
as they mounted a stony hill bare of grass at some four 
hundred yards distance; and with my Zeiss the manes looked 
dark and long. One was a specially fine beast. 
I am pretty well satisfied that the colder the country 
the darker and longer the mane. In India the lion is 
maneless. On the Athi plain a really dark lion is seldom 
seen; in Somaliland is never seen, my Somali tell me. The 
nights on this great plateau at an altitude of almost seven 
thousand feet are often bitterly cold. Inthe Eldama Ravine 
country, which we passed through, they are even colder. 
It was there Mr. Aikly, for the Field Museum, succeeded 
in securing as fine a black-maned lion as has been taken 
out of the country. 
I met some Boers just come from the Transvaal. They 
were looking at land to take as homesteads, and were enthu- 
slastic over the country they had just seen. ‘They had 
killed two lions, one of them carrying a fairly black mane 
though the hair was not very long or the lion exceptionally 
large. ‘They told me they had never seen a lion in South 
Africa to match it, though they had shot many. All of 
which goes to prove, I think, that the colder the country 
the darker and heavier the hair. I might add that no wild 
lion has a mane to match some I have seen in the 
Zoological Gardens in London and Dublin. 
On the night of May 29th we heard two or three lions 
calling some distance down river, and fancied they might 
be feasting on a water buck J. J. W. had shot that after- 
noon down there, and he, with his usual unselfishness, 
insisted that I should go down river and take the chance. 
