306 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



finally trot away until we had got our things packed 

 up and were preparing to move in their direction. 



I found both the wart-hogs and the bush-pigs, 

 too, either very tame or very stupid ; and several 

 hippopotamuses, which were disporting themselves 

 in small muddy lagoons, were at my mercy, had I 

 wished to interfere with them ; but on this trip I 

 killed very few animals, nor ever fired a single shot 

 except when obliged to do so, in order to secure a 

 supply of meat for myself and my native attendants. 



In a country so well stocked with antelopes, 

 zebras, and buffaloes, carnivorous animals, it may 

 well be supposed, were not wanting, and, indeed, in 

 no part of Africa probably were lions, leopards, 

 hyaenas, wild dogs, and jackals more plentiful than 

 they were in the neighbourhood of the lower 

 Pungwe river at the time when Mr. Rhodes's 

 pioneers first entered Mashunaland. 



But all carnivorous animals are almost entirely 

 nocturnal in their habits, and therefore only occa- 

 sionally encountered in the daytime ; and on the 

 occasion of mv first visit to this district I saw 



j 



neither lions, hyaenas, nor leopards, though the 

 two former animals roared and howled nightly 

 round my camp, and the grunting cry of the latter 

 was often heard. Nor was I much more fortunate 

 in this respect on my second visit to the same part 

 of the country in 1892 ; for though I spent six weeks 

 travelling and hunting between the Pungwe river 

 and Lake Sungwe during October and November 

 of that year, I only saw three lions, though there 

 was not a single night during the trip on which I 

 did not hear some of these animals roaring, some- 

 times close to camp, at others in the distance. On 

 several occasions, too, I heard three different troops 

 or families of lions roaring on the same night. 



On the clay when I saw the three lions, I had 

 left camp with a few native followers very earl)- in 



