306 After Big Game in Central Africa 



the habits of these animals, of which we are so ignorant, and 

 which we cannot study like the hunter." I have studied 

 the lion near at hand, and, as seen in the preceding 

 chapters, have tracked it and waited for it with in- 

 defatigable patience. The reader will do me this justice, 

 that only a passion such as mine could determine a man 

 to follow such a profession. The opinions which I ex- 

 press as follows have been gained during seven years' 

 hunting in Africa. 



By exerting all its strength, a lion can drag animals of 

 the size of a buffalo fifty yards over flat ground. It is in- 

 capable of lifting, without the thing lifted touching the 

 ground, an animal bigger than a goat, and it cannot, with 

 or without a load, spring over a wall or a stockade. It can 

 run more quickly than the fastest horse, and, as Mr. Selous 

 has said, a mount beyond comparison is necessary to escape 

 from a pursuing lion. Besides, as we know, it pursues and 

 kills waterbucks and elands. As to its tail, I do not know 

 that it can do anything else with it than flick its sides ; it 

 has better weapons at its disposal. And its eyes are like 

 all eyes : they are light-green or have a reddish appearance 

 when exposed to the light at a certain angle, but in the 

 darkness you can no more see the eyes of a feline than it 

 can see you. On the face of it, it would be unnatural if 

 this animal, an invisible hunter of the night, put its 

 quarry to flight by showing two glaring eyes. Amid such 

 conditions, it would simply die of hunger. Nor do I 

 believe in its courage. It fears man and always gives way 

 before him. Sometimes it growls when withdrawing, but 

 it makes off in the end. It rarely attacks man unless it is 

 accustomed to eating human flesh, and I have lived for 

 years surrounded by lions without anything happening to 

 me. Often there has not even been' a stockade to separate 

 me from them ; a few half-extinguished camp-fires kept 

 them at a distance. The only accidents which have 

 occurred to my knowledge have been in villages or in their 



