116 THE GIRAFFE. 



hoping to get out of their sight, is not slow in falling 

 into the trap. He plunges in amongst the trees, seeks 

 the thickest part of the wcocl, but the bushes and the 

 branches hindering his progress, the hunters gain upon 

 him ; and, as if the natural obstacles were not enough, 

 they stretch cords across the path of the giraffe. He 

 falls, and they throw a halter over him. If he refuses 

 to walk, they kill him, in order at least to obtain his 

 skin. This is an extremity to which they are never 

 reduced with the young ones : more docile than the 

 adults, they follow the hunters, who sell them in the 

 neighbouring villages. 



But the giraffe has other enemies besides man. 

 There is the lion. 



If the giraffe is vigorous, he sometimes succeeds 

 in escaping from him. A traveller relates having seen 

 two whose shoulders bore indelible marks of their 

 having carried the monarch of the forest on their 

 backs, and that they had come off victorious from the 

 struggle. The lion always endeavours to throw himself 

 on the giraffe's back; plunging his sharp claws into 

 the shoulders, he gnaws before him until he reaches 

 the vertebrae of the neck, then the two animals fall 

 together, and the lion is often maimed in the struggle ; 

 and sometimes even worse luck befalls him. 



A young savage in South America, returning to his 

 village, stopped at a spring to quench his thirst ; then 



