In Wildest Africa -^ 



occasion, and gives a good idea of the way in which I 

 am accustomed to keep a record of such things in my 

 diary. I must add that my adventures and narrow escapes 

 while trying to secure lions have been of a kind such as 

 would be to the taste only of those most greedy of 

 excitement. 



In 1897 ^ had already observed that the lion was to be 

 found in great troops in thinly populated neighbourhoods, 

 where he was at no loss for prey and where he had not 

 much to fear from man. As many as thirty lions have been 

 found together, and I myself have seen a troop of fourteen 

 with my own eyes. Other sportsmen have seen still larger 

 troops in East Africa. Quite recently Duke Adolf 

 Friedrich of Mecklenburg, who, on the occasion of his 

 second African trip, made some interesting observations in 

 regard to Rons, has borne witness to the existence of very 

 large troops. During the period in which I devoted myself 

 entirely to making photographic studies of wild life, and 

 consequently left undisturbed all the different species of 

 game which swarmed around my camp, I was sometimes 

 surrounded for days, weeks even, by great numbers of 

 them, sometimes to an alarming extent. I have already 

 described how one night an old lion brushed close by 

 my tent to drink at the brook near which we were 

 encamping, although it was just as easy for him to drink 

 from the same stream at any point for miles to either side 

 of us. On another occasion, as could be seen from the 

 tracks, lions approached our camp until within a few yards 

 of it. When I was photographing the lions falling upon 

 the heifers and donkeys, as described in With Flashlight 



482 



