318 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



nearer.' Clarkson thereupon took his gun from his shoulder 

 and waited. Suddenly he told me the lion, after having stood 

 for some seconds looking the picture of rage and determination 

 not to give way, stopped growling, and turning quickly round, 

 made a bolt through the forest, past the carcase of the elephant, 

 just as hard as he could go. No one fired at him, as heavy 

 elephant guns were not suitable weapons for shooting quickly 

 at a comparatively small animal moving rapidly amongst the 

 stems of trees, and so this lion got off scot free. He had only 

 tried to frighten my friends away from the carcase at which he 

 was feeding, but whether if a single unarmed man had come 

 near him he might not have bitten him it is hard to say. 

 During the second year of the occupation of Mashonaland, 

 a prospector named Jones, having lost a donkey, walked out 

 from Salisbury along the main road to look for it. Before he 

 had proceeded far, and when he was still in sight of the huts 

 and houses of the township, he came upon a dead donkey 

 lying near the roadside, and thinking it might be the animal he 

 was in search of, went to examine it, when a lioness by whom the 

 ass had been killed, and who was lying near the carcase, sprang 

 upon him, and seizing him by the shoulder, with her teeth 

 dragged him to the ground, and stood over him growling. 

 Fortunately for Mr. Jones, a young colonist named Swanapool, 

 a lad only fourteen years of age, was at that moment coming 

 along the road with a rifle in his hands, and he at once fired at 

 and killed the lioness before she had inflicted any further 

 injuries on her victim. Mr. Jones, however, had been badly 

 bitten in the shoulder, and was an inmate of the hospital at 

 Salisbury for some considerable time in consequence. The 

 two anecdotes I have just related will serve to show that in 

 Southern Africa lions do not invariably at once beat a retreat 

 when brought face to face with man in the daytime. These 

 cases are, however, exceptional, and it may fairly be said that, 

 speaking generally, these great cats have a most wholesome 

 dread of the human biped, and avoid him as much as possible 

 by daylight, but when once the sun has set and the darkness 



