With Flashlight and Rifle -* 



cubs especially are quick to attack, and consequently 

 dangerous. I always prefer to shoot the lioness first, the 

 lion afterwards as the former is apt sometimes to spring 

 on you while you are aiming at her mate. In this she 

 compares very advantageously with him, for he shows no 

 such gallantry. Natives have often told me the same 

 thing. 



Lions that are not hungry almost always avoid an 

 encounter with men. Of course there are exceptions, as 

 will be gathered from my own account of a lion-hunt 

 on the heights of Kikuyu. Keepers in zoological gardens 

 have observed the same thing. Lions, they say, show 

 every degree of good-humour or . ill-temper according to 

 their age and the way they have been reared and looked 

 after. What can be done by careful treatment is shown 

 by the almost proverbial methods of the trainer Have- 

 mann, who moves in and out among his animal pupils in 

 the Berlin Zoological Gardens in the friendliest manner, 

 without ever having to use force with them, simply as 

 the result of the excellent way in which he looks after 

 them. 



Although it is often asserted that lions are given, like 

 leopards, to making their way into houses at night time 

 and carrying off human beings from inside, I have 

 come across few authentic cases of this kind. While the 

 Uganda railway was in course of construction, two officials 

 connected with it were spending the night in a railway 

 waggon, the door of which was left open on account of 

 the heat. Awakened by a noise, one of them, who was 

 sleeping upon a high bed-contrivance, looked down to 



350 



