The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 



with the hope that I should surprise lions making 

 a meal of one of them. I had purposely come 

 away from my main camp so that I should be 

 nearer and able to visit the kills more regularly, 

 I regret to say without success. The carcasses 

 got more highly scented daily, until I really 

 could not face them any longer. We, of course, 

 had to come up-wind to them, consequently 

 getting the whole force of the smell. 



Early on the last morning at the lagoons I had 

 the camp struck after we had left, meaning not to 

 return to this place, but to rejoin the permanent 

 camp. We had nearly reached the place where our 

 first dead buffalo lay when I saw a lion galloping 

 as hard as he could travel down the centre of an 

 open spot. He was at least three hundred yards 

 away, so that a shot was out of the question. 

 I had therefore the mortification of seeing him 

 disappear into some reeds in the distance. This 

 was the only lion I saw quite in the open, and 

 although I spent the early mornings looking 

 solely for them, I never got even a shot at one, 

 which only goes to prove that in a more or less 

 densely covered reed country the words "chance" 

 and " luck " have an important bearing on the 

 result of one's labours. I should, were I to have 

 the good fortune to revisit this part of Africa, 

 take with me from Durban a pack of dogs. I 

 think that then success might be assured, the only 

 drawback to the scheme being that the tsetse fly 



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