CHAPTER IV. 



A MAN-EATING LION A DANGEROUS EPISODE. 



" IN Griqualand West, near where the village of 

 Bootsop now stands, I was hunting ostriches not 

 that I would have stopped to consider long whether 

 I would or would not fire at gembok or hartebeeste, 

 if one had come within range. This was some years 

 before the discovery of diamonds on the Vaal river, 

 so that few white men had then visited that district, 

 with the exception of an occasional missionary on 

 his way to Kuruman. Fire-arms were then very 

 scarce in fact, they were unneeded, for game 

 was plentiful ; so much so, that the little Bushmen 

 could obtain what they w r anted with no other 

 weapons than bows and arrows. In the afternoon 

 I stopped at a kraal of Damaras, the chief of which 

 told me that he had seen several impsi (Bechuana, 

 ostrich) in an adjoining kloof. For it I started, and 

 found the birds, but the old musket or the powder 

 would not shoot straight, so by the time I came 

 down to my last charge I had not killed a single 

 bird. Being determined to make certain with my 

 last shot, I stalked for several hundred yards a 



