SECOND EXPEDITION TO EAST AFRICA 221 



by daylight. We had not the luck to come across 

 any natural kills, and on the Guaso Nyiro we were 

 marching so fast that we had not the time to do 

 any sitting up over baits at night. On the 

 Rupingazi, and in the country near Juja farm, 

 where this method might perhaps have been 

 profitably employed, we ran into the two families 

 of lions which were in occupation. 



I have heard of a good bag of lions being made 

 in East Africa by sportsmen who tracked the 

 animals from the plains, where the grass had been 

 recently burnt, to the places where they were 

 lying asleep in the adjoining cover. This appears 

 to me to be the most interesting and sporting 

 method of shooting lions I have ever heard of ; 

 but in the part of the country through which we 

 travelled this method would not have been 

 practicable. 



Most of the good bags of lions which have been 

 made in recent years have, I think, been made by 

 the use of horses. Good light-weight riders gallop 

 any lion which may be sighted in the open plain 

 in the early morning. The lion, when he finds 

 that he is outpaced, stands at bay, and the sports- 

 ,man or sportsmen come up and shoot him. Dogs 

 also are naturally very useful. This appears to 

 have been the manner in which the Assyrians 

 hunted, as depicted in the friezes, and then, as 

 now, the method was very successful. Even the 

 large bags of lions which have been recently made 

 in East Africa are dwarfed into insignificance by 

 the noble bag claimed by Tiglath Pileser of 300 

 lions shot on foot " in the fullness of his manly 

 might," and 800 more shot from his chariot. The 



