84 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



got there, the feasters probably being miles away. The ladies 

 and children of the villages were always abstracted when I was 

 out of reach, and those lions which paid nightly visits to the 

 camp, and which were sometimes seen, were always just not 

 visible when I had tumbled out of bed, roused by the whisper of 

 " asad " (lion) in my ear. 



My turn was to come, however, and in a way which was not 

 desired by any of us, for it proved most disastrous to one of the 

 party. Still it ended in the well-deserved death of a magnificent 

 old lion. 



After a long, tiring march along the dry, sandy bed of the 

 Barka, we had made our camp close to where a small streamlet, 

 now also dry, joins the main river in a dense dome-palm jungle. 

 We had already been encamped near the spot about two months 

 before, when the mat-village of the Bakhih tribe, a division of 

 the pastoral Beni-Amer, was established in the immediate 

 vicinity, which, on account of the numerous flocks, proved a 

 powerful attraction to the genus "Leo." Lions then came to 

 look at us nightly, but, though the camp fires made us visible to 

 them, they were invisible to us. It is an uncomfortable ghostly 

 sound, this stifled roar, or rather cat-like growl, round the camp 

 at night, close to one's bed! We had no tents. The know- 

 ledge of the immediate proximity of the animal makes one grasp 

 one's rifle, and peer into the darkness, with a strong inward 

 desire to jump out of bed, and get as near the fire as possible. 

 The men disliked it particularly, were all awake in a moment, 

 and noisily added fresh logs to the fire. It is difficult to 

 understand why some lions roar at night. Is it a challenge, 

 or an invitation to their lady friends, for it would hardly help 

 them to secure their supper ? What object, though, could they 

 have in roaring when haunting our camp ? If it was in sport, 

 to frighten the men, they succeeded. That all lions do not 

 make themselves noisily heard when intent upon appeasing their 

 appetite this story shows, for my future victim walked right 

 through the camp, examining every one carefully before he 

 finally made up his mind as to the most appetising morsel. 

 Tastes differ ; but of this all in good time. The camp looked 

 very pretty that night, established among lofty dome-palms, at 

 the edge of the sandy river-bed ; the fires were burning brightly, 

 and as I watched it from my bed, was as picturesque as any 



