270 After Big Game in Central Africa 



You will easily understand my joy at having 

 added a magnificent lioness to my lion. She was 

 advanced in age and very large. 



Again the photographic camera performs its work, 

 and the skinning immediately follows, my intention 

 being to dry the two skins the same day. The men 

 carry everything, and we are getting ready to return 

 to camp behind them, for it will soon be eleven 

 o'clock in the morning, when the idea occurs to me 

 to follow, for a short distance, the track of the first 

 wounded lion. A few drops of blood indicate its 

 passage through the grass. I follow the traces 

 through sheer curiosity, being in every way satisfied 

 with the day's sport, and not regretting inordinately 

 the loss of the animal. On the bank of the river, 

 which it recrossed, we glance into the dark mass of 

 dry leaves, but nothing is to be seen. We are about 

 to turn round when something like regret comes over 

 me, and I say to my men, " Wait for me. I'm going 

 to the opposite bank to look over the plain." At the 

 other side, in fact, is a plain upon which nothing has 

 been spared by the fire ; which is, consequently, as 

 flat as a billiard-table ; the eye can see over it a great 

 distance. 



I jump down, cross the river-bed where the dry 

 leaves are spotted with blood, and, climbing the 

 opposite bank, part the shrubs to look through. At 

 first I see nothing ; but a little later I see something 

 tawny, like an antelope, lying down more than 200 

 yards away. An antelope lying down in the midst 

 of the unprotected plain at eleven o'clock in the 



