THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 253 



the race by both elephant and buffalo. Lord 

 Delamere was badly mauled by a lion in 

 Somaliland, but escaped with his life. A 

 sadder case was that of one of the Mashonaland 

 Pioneers, in the time of Cecil Rhodes. A lion 

 got into his tent one night and bit off one of 

 his hands. The lion was driven off, but the 

 poor fellow died of his wounds. A yet more 

 recent victim of a lion was Mr. Grey, brother 

 of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1908 

 a Canadian trooper in the Transvaal Police, 

 named Eagle, a man of very powerful physique, 

 was killed by a lioness, though not before he 

 had kicked her to the point of death. 



Of all the stories of escape from lions after 

 being seized, none, I think, equals that of 

 Mr. Wolhuter, a Transvaal game ranger, on 

 August 26th, 1903. As told by himself in the 

 Journal of the Society for the Preservation 

 of the Wild Fauna of the Empire, the story 

 was as follows : It seems that he was riding 

 alone, about an hour after sunset, with a big 

 rough-haired dog. Suddenly the dog ran 

 forwards, barking, and Mr. Wolhuter saw 

 some indistinct forms moving in the bush 

 alongside the road, which he took to be reed- 

 buck, or at any rate some sort of antelope. 

 The last animal he thought of was a lion, as, 

 curiously enough, he had been on the look out 

 for lions for some time and always without 



