THE LION. 221 



when the brawling rabble came within his reach. But the 

 hunters continuing in the meantime to pepper the bushes at 

 random with slugs and bullets, at length slightly wounded 

 him. Then arose the royal beast in wrath, and, with a terrible 

 roar, burst forth upon his foes. Regardless of a shower of 

 balls, he bounded forward, and in an instant turned the chase 

 upon them. All took to their heels or their horses. One huge 

 fellow, of greater size than alacrity, who we shall call Hugo 

 Zwaar-van-heupen, or Hercules Heavy-stern, not having time 

 to mount his horse, was left in the *rear, and speedily run 

 down by the rampant lecuw (lion). Hugo fell, not as Lochiel, 

 " with his back to the field, and his face to the foe," but the 

 reverse way; and he had the prudence to lie flat and quiet 

 as a log. The victorious lion snuffed at him, scratched him 

 with his paw, and then magnanimously bestriding him, sat 

 quietly down upon his body. His routed companions, col- 

 lecting in a band, took courage at length to face about 5 and 

 seeing the posture of affairs, imagined their comrade was killed, 

 and began to concert measures for revenging him. After a 

 short pause, however, the lion resigned of his own accord his 

 seat of triumph, relieved his panting captive, and retreated 

 towards the mountains. The party, on coming up, found their 

 friend shaking his ears, unharmed from the war, except what 

 he had suffered from a very ungentlemanly piece of conduct 

 in the lion, who it seems had actually treated his prostrate 

 foe in the same ignominious manner as Gulliver did the Palace 

 of Lilliput on a certain occasion, and for which he was after- 

 wards justly impeached of high treason." 



Mr. Lewis Leslie, who was formerly attached to a party of 

 the Cape Cavalry encamped on the banks of Orange River, 

 in South Africa, for the protection of the Boors against the 

 threatened invasion of a savage tribe, says that these almost 

 pastoral farmers, in the drier season, betake themselves to tents, 

 and with their flocks wander over the sandy waste in search 

 of pasturage for their sheep and cattle. " While encamped 

 in these open plains, their kraals or folds were frequently 



