THE VENGEANCE OF THE WILD 253 



the race by both elephant and buffalo. Lord 

 Delamere was badly mauled by a lion in 

 Somaliland, but escaped with his life. A 

 sadder case was that of one of the Mashonaland 

 Pioneers, in the time of Cecil Rhodes. A lion 

 got into his tent one night and bit off one of 

 his hands. The lion was driven off, but the 

 poor fellow died of his wounds. A yet more 

 recent victim of a lion was Mr. Grey, brother 

 of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In 1908 

 a Canadian trooper in the Transvaal Police, 

 named Eagle, a man of very powerful physique, 

 was killed by a lioness, though not before he 

 had kicked her to the point of death. 



Of all the stories of escape from lions after 

 being seized, none, I think, equals that of 

 Mr. Wolhuter, a Transvaal game ranger, on 

 August 26th, 1903. As told by himself in the 

 Journal of the Society for the Preservation 

 of the Wild Fauna of the Empire^ the story 

 was as follows : It seems that he was riding 

 alone, about an hour after sunset, with a big 

 rough-haired dog. Suddenly the dog ran 

 forwards, barking, and Mr. Wolhuter saw 

 some indistinct forms moving in the bush 

 alongside the road, which he took to be reed- 

 buck, or at any rate some sort of antelope. 

 The last animal he thought of was a lion, as, 

 curiously enough, he had been on the look out 

 for lions for some time and always without 



