j " 



T 



HUNTING THE LION 17 



measure her. I judged her to be about 8 feet 2 inches; 

 her fangs were yellow and broken." 



Some three days after the foregoing incident Lieut. 

 Hodson himself had an even closer interview with a 

 lioness. In his account of the adventure he says : 

 " I called to Mosueu, my servant, to bring up my 

 horse as soon as possible, and when he arrived 

 I cantered on ahead in the hopes of catching 

 the lions up, but without success. It was now about 

 i p.m., and very hot, but I decided we would take 

 their spoor again and have one more try at them, 

 as I did not think they would go very far in 

 the great heat. There was one full-grown lioness and 

 her two cubs, one of the latter being nearly full- 

 grown. This time I rode my horse. No. 2 again 

 went on the spoor, which now began to turn and 

 twist a good deal, showing that the lioness wished 

 to lie up. W/e presently left the mopane forest and 

 came to a piece of turf with very long grass 

 growing on it. W,e had gone only a few hundred 

 yards into it when we heard the old lioness growling, 

 his piece of ground was fearfully holey, but I put 

 spurs into my pony and cantered towards the place 

 where the lioness was growling. I must admit that I 

 thought she was making away towards the forest, but to 

 my surprise I suddenly came on her in the long grass. 

 She did not run away, but waited for me, and the 

 merest neophyte could have seen that she meant busi- 

 ness. She really looked very unpleasant, and what 

 was worse was the noise she made. I tried to pull 

 up, but only managed to do so when I was about 

 ten yards off her. I could see that it was only a 

 question of moments before she charged, and I tried 



