■WITH FLASH-LIGHT AND RIFLE 



greatly disconcerted when one lion after another emerged 

 out of the night in front of him. Reading his account, I 

 could fully appreciate his feelings, for I myself have had 

 similar experiences with lions. 



I prefer, however, any other manner of hunting the 

 lion to lying in wait for him at night, even catching him 

 in heavy iron-traps. Standing at night for hours, and 

 often in vain, in unhealthy thickets, without rest or sleep, 

 always at a tension which unfits one for the next day's 

 work, one has not always a sure aim in case the lion 

 does appear, since one fires almost at random in the 

 darkness of the night. Hunting the lion in the open, 

 even when he drags the iron -trap by which he may have 

 been caught, is more exciting and satisfactory from a 

 S]iortsman's point of view. 



The lion usually rests during the day under trees and 

 in thickets ; he prowls and hunts at night. So it happens 

 that a lion is rarely met with in daytime, and even then 

 he is apt to spy his enemy and to make his escape be- 

 fore the hunter is ready to shoot. 



1 proved to my own satisfaction, as early as 1896, that 

 lions are found at certain times of the year living to- 

 gether in troops. Probably this has been the case all 

 over the country. North Africa included, before the 

 natives and colonists decimated the lions. Reliable 

 English travellers have found as many as twenty-seven 

 in one troop ; the largest troop observed by me numbered 

 seventeen. Two or three lionesses, with their whelps, 



198 



