CHAPTER VII. 



MY PET LIONS A TERRIBLE NIGHT. 



BUT, as we have some hours to wait ere the moon 

 rises, if the reader will come and rest with me inside 

 my waggon (in imagination, at least), I will tell him 

 of a late experience in " the big game country." 



The majority of people have possessed pets of 

 some description or other, but few are able to say 

 that they have possessed a couple of tame lions, for 

 tame they were when I owned Leo and Juno, and 

 I can vouch that more interesting pets were never 

 the property of any individual. How I obtained 

 them I will endeavour, to the best of my ability, to 

 inform my readers. 



In those happy days, now some years past, when 

 war had not broken out between the Boers of the 

 Transvaal and Great Britain, I was hunting large 

 game to the north of the Crocodile river, where the 

 country of Lubengulo, king of the Matabeles, abuts 

 on that of Kama, king of Bamangwatos. 



The margin of the Crocodile river here is covered 

 with thick timber or dense masses of reeds, but as 



