ACROSS THE MAU ESCARPMENT 73 



them in is long-grass country, for the wide grass trail of 

 the big, low body is easiest of all tracks to follow, I would 

 have gone after them as long as my knee held out. Still, 

 at that time, I could walk but little, and most probably 

 they would not have given me a chance. As it was, I had 

 to content myself with a good view of the splendid beasts 

 as they mounted a stony hill bare of grass at some four 

 hundred yards distance; and with my Zeiss the manes looked 

 -dark and long. One was a specially fine beast. 



I am pretty well satisfied that the colder the country 

 the darker and longer the mane. In India the lion is 

 maneless. On the Athi plain a really dark lion is seldom 

 seen; in Somaliland is never seen, my Somali tell me. The 

 nights on this great plateau at an altitude of almost seven 

 thousand feet are often bitterly cold. In the Eldama Ravine 

 country, which we passed through, they are even colder. 

 Jt was there Mr. Aikly, for the Field Museum, succeeded 

 in securing as fine a black-maned lion as has been taken 

 out of the country. 



I met some Boers just come from the Transvaal. They 

 were looking at land to take as homesteads, and were enthu- 

 siastic over the country they had just seen. They had 

 killed two lions, one of them carrying a fairly black mane 

 though the hair was not very long or the lion exceptionally 

 large. They told me they had never seen a lion in South 

 Africa to match it, though they had shot many. All of 

 which goes to prove, I think, that the colder the country 

 the darker and heavier the hair. I might add that no wild 

 lion has a mane to match some I have seen in the 

 Zoological Gardens in London and Dublin. 



On the night of May 29th we heard two or three lions 

 calling some distance down river, and fancied they might 

 be feasting on a water buck J. J. W. had shot that after- 

 noon down there, and he, with his usual unselfishness, 

 insisted that I should go down river and take the chance. 



