In Wildest Africa -^ 



would kill five-and-twenty lions. This was so even 

 down to the year 1863, when impallah antelopes 

 i^^pyceros stiard) had already becorne very rare in 

 Bechuanaland, and in Natal a keen control had to be 

 instituted over the use of arms. Times have changed. 

 In the year 1899 much sensation was aroused by the 

 fact that a lion was killed near Johannesburg, and so 

 far back as 1883 there was quite a to-do over a lion 

 that was seen and killed at Uppington, on the Orange 

 River. To Oswald and Vardon, well-known English 

 hunters, as well as to Moffat in Bechuanaland, the 

 encountering of as many as nine troops of lions in a 

 day was quite an ordinary experience, and I still found 

 lions in surprising numbers in 1896 in German and British 

 East Africa. The practical records of the Anglo-German 

 Boundary Commission In East Africa, the observations 

 made lately by Duke Adolf Friedrlch of Mecklenburg, 

 and the evidence of many other trustworthy witnesses, 

 have confirmed these facts. 



Although I do not think that lions, at least In districts 

 where game is very plentiful, are so dangerous as some 

 would make out, yet I quite agree with the statement 

 made by H. A. Bryden that a lion-hunt made on foot 

 must be reckoned as one of the most dangerous sports 

 there are. The experience of an authority like Selous, 

 who was seized by lions during the night in the 

 jungle, proves this. 



In the region in which I had such success lion- 

 hunting in 1897, there were many mishaps. My friend 

 the commandant of Fort Smith in Kikuyuland, who 



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