IO2 



that I had personal knowledge of. When hunting near 

 the Athi River, on my first visit to the country, Mr. L. and 

 Mr. G., who is now one of the game rangers, had been hunt- 

 ing lion on one side of a mountain which rises from the 

 plain thirty miles from Nairobi, and which every visitor to 

 the country knows well Donyea Sabuk. I had been doing 

 all I could on the other side to find one to hunt. They 

 killed three in ten days. During three weeks' hard work 

 I never saw one. Such is luck in lion hunting. Well, 

 one day the two men saw a lioness, and rode her hard. 

 They lost her in some shortish grass, and incautiously 

 came nearer than they should have done to look for her. 

 In an instant she was on them, carrying Mr. G. from his 

 pony, and biting him through and through the thigh. Then, 

 like a flash, turning on Mr. L., whom she dashed down with 

 a claw wound across the face which destroyed one eye and 

 cut through the nose. As she stood on unfortunate L., 

 mauling his shoulder, G. crawled up, wounded as he was, 

 and blew her brains out. Mr. L. died a few days 

 afterward. 



Lions will sometimes, though very rarely, charge from 

 a distance. When they do, they are apt to come fast. A 

 friend of mine, a first-rate hunter, with another man who 

 had neither much nerve nor experience, came on two lionesses 

 lying on a bare hillside about two hundred and fifty yards 

 away. My friend took a steady shot at one of them, and dis- 

 abled it at once. His man missed the second. This second, 

 without a moment's hesitation, came at them fast. It was evi- 

 dent at a glance that the lioness meant business; so ran 



quickly to an ant hill, a few yards to one side, crying out to 

 the other as he did so, "Don't fire; let her come." But 

 that onward rush was more than untried nerves could stand, 

 and while she was still more than one hundred yards away, 

 fire was opened on her first by - - and then by his 

 frightened and demoralized Somali gunbearer. 



