A NOTORIOUS MAN-EATER 



brute. The leopard, which eventually came to be known 

 as the " L Man-Eater," had had a long and un- 

 interrupted career of crime. So far as could be ascertained, 

 its first human victim was a girl of four years of age, who 

 was carried off one evening, while at play in the courtyard 

 of the house ! 



Many shooting parties had been organized, by both 

 European and native gentlemen alike, for the destruction 

 of this pest, but without success, for whenever hunted, it 

 sought refuge in one of the many sugar-cane crops, which 

 for eleven months of the year are rich and abundant. 

 These crops not only afforded the best possible cover for 

 the hunted animal, but, being of considerable value, a line 

 of elephants could not be taken through them without 

 causing serious damage to the owners. 



The leopard first manifested its man-eating propensities 

 when it carried off and ate the girl already mentioned. 

 Later on in the same month it killed a boy of eight, and 

 devoured an infant of one and a-half years. The next 

 human victim was a child killed a month later. 



From the January to end of December in that year it 

 had killed and wholly or partially devoured exactly one 

 hundred persons, mostly women and children, and in the 

 following year, up to the following April, when it was shot, 

 it had accounted for fifty-four more. This making a total 

 of one hundred and fifty-four persons killed within a space 

 of twenty-one months ! 



The terror created by such a wholesale slaughter of 

 human beings in one particular group of villages may be 

 more easily imagined than described. The people were 

 fairly panic-stricken. Some fled and sought refuge in 

 distant villages, others, abandoning all thoughts of sleep, 

 barricaded their doors and windows and kept on the watch 

 all night, while some of the younger and able-bodied 

 men, goaded to desperation by the loss of wife, child, or 

 other near relative, lay in wait for this demon in feline 

 form, and when it next made its onslaught, attacked it in 

 a body, armed with sticks and stones, but only to lose 

 some of their own number. For the bloodthirsty brute, 

 encouraged by former successes, and wholly devoid of 

 fear, charged boldly into the crowd, sometimes killing one 



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