AT GRIPS WITH THE LION 69 



lion the day before. The boys were naturally 

 anxious and slow, and I think did well to stick to 

 the tracks at all. Finally, after some hours on 

 the trail, the tracks again began to take us into 

 thicker thorn-bush country. 



It was all rather close work, and as it was 

 becoming hot and I was getting tired, and there 

 was no certainty of how far off the lions might 

 still be, I began to think we should have to give 

 the hunt up. However, just ahead of us was a 

 patch of more open bush, once an old cultivation 

 plot (or " lands " as it is called in Africa), where 

 natives had grown mealies or other grain, now 

 abandoned, the light reddish soil having been 

 exhausted. This patch had three or four years' 

 growth of young bushes scattered over it, besides 

 old stumps and grass. Giving one of my boys my 

 box of matches and telling them to start a fire, I 

 myself made a circle, followed by the two bushmen 

 and one or two of the other natives. When we 

 had gone round to the far edge of the old lands, 

 I thought I would wait there in some good posi- 

 tion on the chance of getting a shot at the lions as 

 they came past me from the fire, that is, if they 

 were still there. No sooner had I decided that 

 we had reached a good position, than my boys 

 showed me fresh lion tracks, which I had crossed, 

 showing that the lions had got on ahead of us. 

 This seemed a finishing stroke, and I sat down to 

 wait for the remainder of the boys before returning 

 to my camp. In the meantime I asked the boys to 



