316 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



hunter, and a man of absolute reliability, and what he has told 

 me concerning the lions he has met with in Eastern Africa is 

 so different from my own experience that I can only conclude 

 that, speaking generally, those animals differ, as I say, in 

 character in different portions of the continent ; and if that is 

 the case, my remarks will only apply to lions in Southern Africa. 



I ought first to say, however, that though my experience 

 of lions is considerable, it is not as great as many people 

 might suppose. I have never missed an opportunity of 

 shooting them when it presented itself, but I have never 

 systematically hunted these animals. Thus, although I have 

 spent twenty years in the wilds of Africa, I have only shot 

 twenty-five lions when entirely by myself, though besides these 

 I have assisted at the shooting of eleven others, and helped to 

 skin eight more in which there were no bullets of mine. The 

 greatest number of lions I have shot in one season is only 

 seven. Altogether this is a very poor record compared to the 

 prodigious bags of lions made of late years in Somaliland by 

 Colonel Arthur Paget, Lord Delamere, Colonel Curtis, Lord 

 Wolverton and other English sportsmen ; though I think that 

 there are portions of South-Eastern Africa where equally large 

 bags might be made, if one devoted oneself systematically to lion 

 hunting. Such as my experience has been, however, I will 

 give it. 



When lions are encountered in the daytime, they will almost 

 invariably give way before the presence of man, even when 

 several are together feeding upon the carcase of an animal 

 they have just killed, and at a time when they are presumably 

 hungry. In parts of the country where firearms have been 

 much used, lions will sometimes retreat so rapidly when they 

 are disturbed that it is next to an impossibility to get a shot at 

 one. I remember one cold cloudy winter's morning in Mashona- 

 land coming suddenly upon a male lion, as he was chasing a 

 small herd of koodoo cows. When he observed me, he at once 

 stopped and gazed fixedly at me for just one instant of time, 

 and then, wheeling round, went off through the forest at such a 



