Lions 



Walking to the prone beast, I found him stone 

 dead, and after taking his head and neckskin and 

 a plentiful supply of meat, I went back to camp. 

 Throughout the night lions roared on every side 

 of us they seemed to collect together and voice 

 their troubles in unison. There was but little 

 hope of bagging His Majesty at this season. 

 The grass had not been burnt, and everywhere it 

 stood higher than a lion's back. The one chance 

 was to kill a buffalo as bait and then revisit the 

 carcass at daybreak, when a lion would probably 

 be found feeding. Not so easy as it sounds. 

 The leaving of a dead beast was hard of accom- 

 plishment. For almost as the breath left it 

 hundreds of vultures, or aasvogels, appeared 

 from all points, ready to break up and devour 

 in an incredibly short space any carcass that 

 might be to hand, and nothing but a few bones 

 and skin would be left to attract anything. A 

 buffalo bull's skin is so tough that it alone could 

 resist the onslaught of the scavengers. 



Though we wanted a buffalo badly we could 

 not then come across one, although a small herd 

 of two hundred regularly frequented these plains. 

 Kopping accounted for their absence by saying 

 that the wind had been blowing steadily from 

 one quarter for some days, and that as these 

 beasts feed up-wind they had wisely headed out 

 of our immediate district. 



Kopping and I started out as soon as it was 



75 



