96 THE LAND OF THE LION 
hunt sounds very much like another, to those condemned 
to read the poor account of it; but to the man following up 
the lion or a band of lions, there is sure to be interest and 
variety enough. The wisest and most experienced can never 
tell what a lion will do. Lion hunting, to my mind, has a 
charm all its own. Nothing compares with it, and no driv- 
ing of ravines or swamps, or catching the great cat at his kill, 
is comparable to the joy and steady excitement of tracking 
him down. He chooses the ground. You follow him into 
it. You pit yourself against him. Crouching flat against 
the yellow earth, covered only, perhaps, by a few inches 
of grass, he is almost unbelievably hard to see. His rush 
and spring from a few yards distance, is the fastest thing in 
the world. No animal can escape it, much less clumsy, 
slow-footed man. He has a chance to pay off the universal 
lord and master, the wrongs of the animal world, and here 
in East Africa the lion’s revengeful toll taken on human life 
and limb mounts high. In the thirteen months I have been 
on sefari, two white men have been killed by lions and fif- 
teen mauled badly, to my own knowledge, and these may not 
include all that have suffered from his claws and fangs. 
The band we were now following would not permit a close 
approach. Every half mile or so I could see the rear 
guard slipping off an ant hill or with ears just raised 
above the grass watching our approach. ‘They did not seem 
to fear us, but kept just out of farthest rifle shot. At last, 
as I mounted a stiffish ridge, I had just a glimpse down 
below me, of a regular bunch of lions all trying at the same 
instant to clear off anant hill on which they must have been 
packed together as close as they could be. Innumerable 
tails and hind legs seemed wrapped and twisted together 
as the pack tumbled again into the long grass. (This may 
seem a ludicrous way to speak of the aspect of lions in a 
pack when disturbed. I searched at the time for words to 
describe what I saw, and neither then or since can find 
