Lion Kills a Woman. 101 



I have heard of a great number of natives being killed 

 by lions, and several by elephants and leopards. 



Buffaloes also have killed a few, and crocodiles very_ 

 many. 



Just after I arrived in Zomba in 1903, a native woman 

 was killed in a village by a man-eater. I went off, very 

 keen to get a shot at the beast, and after a walk of ten 

 miles, or slightly more, I reached the scene of the 

 catastrophe. 



Not knowing a word of the language, I had to depend on 

 a boy who had come with me to explain the reason of my 

 visit. He could not speak a word of English, but he had 

 been primed by a white man in Zomba before I left. The 

 small headman first produced a large native mat, on which 

 I sat down, and some native beer and a pot of fried locusts 

 were brought to me. 



I tried the beer and rather liked it, as I was very thirsty, 

 but the locusts were too much for me. Then the headman 

 and some of the villagers took me to the hut, which was a 

 flimsy grass affair, the walls as well as the roof being made 

 of grass. I saw two holes in the walls, and I was able to 

 picture the details of the affair. It seemed that the 

 maneater forced its way through one side, and the 

 husband of the woman, instead of standing by with an 

 axe or spear, dived through the opposite side and left his 

 wife behind. 



She was a big, fat woman, and the lion had killed her by 

 biting the back of her head. Then it had eaten some of 

 the fleshier parts of her body, having also disembowelled 

 her, and I particularly noticed that the lion had made some 

 deep scratches on the hard mud floor of the hut, and no 

 doubt it tried to scrape a hole wherein to bury the entrails. 



It was a disgusting sight, and the smell was overpowering, 

 both of the lion and human being. If natives are frightened 

 they emit a horrible smell, and this carnal odour was more 

 than I could stand for long, and so I departed. 



The natives having collected, we first went into a big 

 mealie field where there was a great amount of lion spoor. 



