-•> The Capturing of a Lion 



However, I have no wish whatever to lay down the law 

 on this question of the relative amount of danger involved 

 in the shooting or the trapping of lions. In many parts of 

 Africa lion-hunting is a matter of luck, above all where 

 horses cannot live owing to the tsetse-fly, and where dogs 

 cannot be employed in large numbers (as used to be the 

 practice in South Africa) to mark down the lions until 

 the hunter can come. For example, we have it on good 

 authority that the members of an Anglo- Abyssinian Border 

 Commission, aided by a pack of dogs, were able to kill about 

 twenty lions in the course of a year. But on entering the 

 region of Lake Rudolf all the dogs fall victims to the tsetse- 

 fly. Hunting with a pack of dogs is very successful. Dogs 

 were used by the three brothers Chudiakow, who, some nine 

 years ago, near Nikolsk on the Amur, in Manchuria, killed 

 nearly forty Siberian tigers in one winter' ; whilst a hunting 

 party near Vladivostock killed in one month one hundred 

 and twenty-five wild boars and seven tigers. Tigers are 

 so plentiful near Mount Ararat that a military guard of 

 three men is necessary during the night-watch to ward off 

 these beasts of prey.^ 



My extraordinary luck on January 25, 1897, when I 

 killed three full-grown lions, fine big specimens, was of 

 course a source of much satisfaction to me. The little 

 sketch-map of the day's hunt which accompanies this 

 chapter shows the route I took on that memorable 



^ In winter, Siberia affords a refuge to beautiful long-haired tigers, such 

 as can be seen in the Berlin Zoological Gardens. 



^ For this information I am indebted to the kindness of the experienced 

 Russian hunter Ceslav von Wancowitz. 



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