474 The Hunting Grounds 



Arabs, which is made of wheaten flour, damped and 

 rolled into small grains like millet-seeds, which are 

 afterwards dried, and boiled up with mutton and fowl, 

 or with milk and sugar. Strolled about the jungle 

 all day, visiting the trail of the lions we had been 

 after in the night. The pugs of the lion were nearly 

 eighteen inches in circumference, those of the lioness 

 about fourteen. The jungle in this part of the 

 country is chiefly composed of a beautiful heather 

 (now in flower), the myrtle, of which the Arabs eat 

 the berries (now ripe) the laburnum (in flower), and 

 several kinds of thorny shrubs, one of which bears a 

 yellow flower, and is called by the French " Jaune 

 d'Espagne." 



There is no large timber : cork-trees, few of which 

 are more than a foot in diameter, are the most 

 common. 



The Arab who lost his cow the night before our 

 arrival came to us with a doleful story, saying that 

 he was a poor man, and that his brother would make 

 him pay for it, if he did not kill the lion, as it was 

 his turn to watch the cattle on that night. His real 



name is Taib, but Mr. B christened him " Cor- 



beau " (on account of our having found him perched 

 in a tree last night), and the Arabs have confirmed 

 the cognomen. 



During the next fortnight we had a good deal of 

 wet weather, and did little but shoot small game, of 



