68 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



in the hope of making his fortune by market- 

 gardening. He was outspanned one night near a 

 native village not far from Umtali, where he had 

 gone to buy grain. His four oxen were tied to 

 the yokes, and he with his native driver was sleep- 

 ing on the ground beneath his two- wheeled cart, 

 when he was seized and carried off by a lion. 

 What the lion did not eat of him, the hyaenas 

 probably got, as nothing was ever found but his 

 head and one foot with the boot still on it. 



A rather curious incident happened the following 

 year at a farm on the Hanyani river about forty 

 miles from Salisbury. The owner of the farm from 

 whom I heard this story (which was fully corroborated 

 by his native servants) was breeding pigs, and had 

 a large number of these animals in a series of pens, 

 separated from one another by low partitions, but 

 all under one thatched roof. One night a lioness 

 managed to force her way into the piggery between 

 two poles, and after having satisfied her hunger, 

 was apparently unable to find her way out again, 

 and either became angry or frightened, or else must 

 have been overcome with an almost insatiable lust 

 for killing. At any rate, she wandered backwards 

 and forwards through the pens and killed almost all 

 the pigs, over a hundred altogether, each one with 

 a bite in the head or the back of the neck. She 

 had only eaten portions of two young pigs. She 

 managed to effect her escape before daylight, but 

 returned the following night, and was shot by a 

 set gun. I saw her skull, which was that of a full- 

 grown lioness with good teeth. 



There appears to be a considerable difference of 

 opinion as to the means usually adopted by lions to 

 effect an entrance by night into a cattle kraal or a 

 camp surrounded by a fence. They are often said 

 to leap boldly over high fences and stockades. In 

 my own experience I have not known them do this. 



