384 LARGE GAME. CHAP. vnr. 



nearly surrounded with dense jungle, except on one side, 

 where a large clearing had recently been made for the 

 purpose of planting coffee, and which was as yet a mass 

 of fallen trees and branches awaiting the time when it 

 should be sufficiently dry to be burnt and give place to 

 the coffee-plants. This jungle was swarming with leo- 

 pards, which were so bold that they used to come almost 

 every night and prowl round the bungalow, carrying off 

 any dog that might be sleeping in the verandah, as well 

 as every fowl that was aUowed to remain out. My friend 

 A. had already fired at two from the windows, one of 

 which was killed, and the other, as could be seen from 

 his blood-marked trail, severely wounded ; but the brutes 

 were such a nuisance that at last he got some large 

 double-springed steel traps, with which on my arrival he 

 had succeeded in catching two more of them. One morn- 

 ing, shortly afterwards, he asked me to go round the 

 traps with him, saying that, besides the chance of finding 

 a leopard or an antelope in them, we were pretty certain 

 to get a shot at some of the latter on the way, and I, of 

 course, at once consented. The first three traps were, I 

 found, set round the carcase of a goat, and had been 

 undisturbed, though the bait had been there so long that 

 no leopard within a reasonable distance could have failed 

 to become aware of its presence. A. told me that he had 

 resorted to a dead bait, which had however been, so far, 

 unsuccessful, on account of the leopards succeeding on 

 several occasions in killing and carrying off the live ones, 

 without springing the traps, but that he thought that 

 merely setting the traps in the paths they frequent with- 

 out any bait was a better plan, as all that he had killed 



