318 BIG GAME SHOOTING 
nearer.’ Clarkson thereupon took his gun from his shoulder 
and waited. Suddenly he told me the lion, after having stood 
for some seconds looking the picture of rage and determination 
not to give, way, stopped growling, and turning quickly round, 
made a bolt through the forest, past the carcase of the elephant, 
just as hard as he could go. No one fired at him, as heavy 
elephant guns were not suitable weapons for shooting quickly 
at a comparatively small animal moving rapidly amongst the’ 
stems of trees, and so this lion got off scot free. He had only 
tried to frighten my friends away from the carcase at which he 
was feeding, but whether if a single unarmed man had come 
near him he might not have bitten him it is hard to say. 
During the second year of the occupation of Mashonaland, 
a prospector named Jones, having lost a donkey, walked out 
from Salisbury along the main road to look for it. Before he 
had proceeded far, and when he was still in sight of the huts 
and houses of the township, he came upon a dead donkey 
lying near the roadside, and thinking it might be the animal he 
was in search of, went to examine it, when a lioness by whom the 
ass had been killed, and who was lying near the carcase, sprang 
upon him, and seizing him by the shoulder, with her teeth 
dragged him to the ground, and stood over him growling. 
Fortunately for Mr. Jones, a young colonist named Swanapool, 
a lad only fourteen years of age, was at that moment coming __ 
along the road with a rifle in his hands, and he at once fired at 
and killed the lioness before she had inflicted any further 
injuries on her victim. Mr. Jones, however, had been badly 
bitten in the shoulder, and was an inmate of the hospital at 
Salisbury for some considerable time in consequence. The 
two anecdotes I have just related will serve to show that in 
Southern Africa lions do not invariably at once beat a retreat 
when brought face to face with man in the daytime. . These 
cases are, however, exceptional, and it may fairly be said that, 
speaking generally, these great cats have a most wholesome 
dread of the human biped, and avoid him as much as possible 
by daylight, but when once the sun has set and the darkness 
; 
3 
7 
2 
5 
: 
a 
a 
ae 
