In Wildest Africa -^ 



which correspond with my own experiences. Count 

 Coudenhove in his first book describes very vividly the 

 effect upon the nerves of the apparition of numbers of 

 lions within a few paces of him, when concealed in a 

 thorn-bush at nigrht. 



There is a wonderful fascination at all times in lying 

 in wait by night for animals, and watching their goings 

 and comings and all their habits. Even here at home, 

 in our game preserves, the experience of passing hour 

 after hour on the look-out has a charm about it difficult 

 to describe in words. Out in the wilderness it is increased 

 immeasurably. It is an intense pleasure to me to read 

 other people's impressions of such experiences, when I 

 feel the accounts are trustworthy. They are so different 

 in some respects, so much alike in others. In my first 

 book I cited Count Coudenhove, mentioned above, in 

 this connection, as a man of proved courage, who writes 

 at once sympathetically and convincingly. Here let 

 me give a passage from the book of another sportsman, 

 Count Hans Palffy. In his Wild tend Hund he speaks 

 as follows : '' I had been waiting for two hours or so in 

 the darkness without being able to descry the carcase 

 of the rhinoceros " [which he himself had shot and which 

 he was using as a bait for the lion], " when suddenly I 

 heard a sound like that of a heavy body falling on the 

 ground, and then almost immediately the lion began 

 growling beside the dead animal. I could hear the King 

 of Beasts quite distinctly, as he began to pull and bite 

 at the flesh. ... He would move away from it every 

 ten or twenty minutes, always in the same direction, to 



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