102 THE LAND OF THE LION 
that I had personal knowledge of. When hunting near 
the Athi River, on my first visit to the country, Mr. L. and 
Mr. G., who is now one of the game rangers, had been hunt- 
ing lion on one side of a mountain which rises from the 
plain thirty miles from Nairobi, and which every visitor to 
the country knows well— Donyea Sabuk. I had been doing 
all I could on the other side to find one to hunt. They 
killed three in ten days. During three weeks’ hard work 
I never saw one. Such is luck in lion hunting. Well, 
one day the two men saw a lioness, and rode her hard. 
They lost her in some shortish grass, and incautiously 
came nearer than they should have done to look for her. 
In an instant she was on them, carrying Mr. G. from his 
pony, and biting him through and through the thigh. ‘Then, 
like a flash, turning on Mr. L., whom she dashed down with 
a claw wound across the face which destroyed one eye and 
cut through the nose. As she stood on unfortunate L., 
mauling his shoulder, G. crawled up, wounded as he was, 
and blew her brains out. Mr. L. died a few days 
afterward. 
Lions will sometimes, though very rarely, charge from 
a distance. When they do, they are apt to come fast. A 
friend of mine, a first-rate hunter, with another man who 
had neither much nerve nor experience, came on two lionesses 
lying on a bare hillside about two hundred and fifty yards 
away. My friend took a steady shot at one of them, and dis- 
abled it at once. His man missed the second. ‘This second, 
without a moment’s hesitation, came at them fast. It was evi- 
dent at a glance that the lioness meant business; so ran 
quickly to an ant hill, a few yards to one side, crying out to 
the other as he did so, ‘‘Don’t fire; let her come.’ But 
that onward rush was more than untried nerves could stand, 
and while she was still more than one hundred yards away, 
fire was opened on her first by and then by his 
frightened and demoralized Somali gunbearer. 
