FOREWORD 



bably have added Col. Patterson to its long list 

 of victims, for in my own experience I have known 

 of three instances of men having been pulled from 

 trees or huts built on platforms at a greater 

 height from the ground than the crazy structure 

 on which Col. Patterson was watching on that night 

 of terrors. 



From the time of Herodotus until to-day, lion 

 stories innumerable have been told and written. I 

 have put some on record myself. But no lion story 

 I have ever heard or read equals in its long- 

 sustained and dramatic interest the story of the 

 Tsavo man-eaters as told by Col. Patterson. A 

 lion story is usually a tale of adventures, often very 

 terrible and pathetic, which occupied but a few 

 hours of one night ; but the tale of the Tsavo man- 

 eaters is an epic of terrible tragedies spread out 

 over several months, and only at last brought to 

 an end by the resource and determination of one 

 man. 



It was some years after I read the first account 

 published of the Tsavo man-eaters that I made the 

 acquaintance of President Roosevelt. I told him 

 all I remembered about it, and he was so deeply 

 interested in the story as he is in all true stories 

 of the nature and characteristics of wild animals 

 that he begged me to send him the short printed 

 account as published in The Field. This I did ; 



