270 THE LAND OF THE LION 
his rifle and shoot it dead, for the beast did not seem in 
the least scared and waited for him. I think this was 
the same leopard that had thoroughly frightened the little 
native bazaar a few days before. He had broken two 
windows, one the postmaster’s, and the other the district 
commissioner’s. In both cases if he had not been fired 
at he would no doubt have come in. Had Mr. S. not 
shot him there would soon have been a man-eating leopard 
at Laikipia. 
Man-eating leopards are not unknown hereabouts; one 
of the best and bravest of the Church Missionary Society’s 
men, Mr. McGregor, was so mauled by one of them, some 
years ago, that for a long time he hung between life and 
death. 
This beast had carried off several children from one of 
the Kikuyu villages which it was in the habit of visiting. 
Emboldened by success it next broke into a hut and seized 
a woman. Mr. McG. happened to be there, and hearing 
her cries, rushed out into the darkness after the beast. He 
is a good shot, and carries a 45-90 Winchester. He came 
upon the leopard round the corner of a hut, and managed 
by a flambeau’s light, to shoot it through the body; but 
it sprang on him and tore a large part of his scalp away, 
and so clawed and mauled his shoulder and left armthat 
they are to-day almost useless to him. He told me that 
he lay unattended (missionaries were few and far between 
then) in that village, for almost six months. 
Lions in this neighbourhood have a bad reputation 
and are not like those on the Nzoia, which are treated, by 
the almost unarmed N’dorobo of that plateau, with con- 
tempt. The N’dorobo are very numerous on the Nzoia, 
yet they seem scarcely ever to come to an encounter with 
the packs of lions that hunt over the country. They sleep 
in twos and threes under any convenient rock or thorn 
tree, light their tiny fires, hang up their meat on the brush 
