34 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVII. 



there, though at the junction of the Hye and the Tigris he saw some 

 Arabs carrying a bier containing the mangled remains of a young child 

 which had been killed by a lion. Lower down, below Kut, he heard lions 

 roaring at night, but did not actually see any. 



Colonel Chesney, the leader of the Euphrates Exijedition, which was to 

 prove the practicability of the Euphrates as a quick mail route to England, 

 made his first visit to Mesopotamia m 1830, to carry out a hurried survey 

 of the EujDhrates and the Tigris. In his account of this expedition he 

 mentions that near Gobain Island, on the well wooded banks of the 

 Euphrates above Hit, he saw a lion on the bank within eight yards of his 

 boat, and higher up at El Werdi he heard lions roaring at night. 



The Euphrates Expedition took place in 1835-36, but no lions appear to 

 have been seen on the voyage down the river, and Ainsworth, writing after 

 1850 (Personal Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition), says that " it is 

 remarkable that the last two mentioned explorers (Loftus and Layard) 

 saw many lions during their excavations of the mounds in the central parts 

 of Khaldeaja, whilst we met with none during the navigation of the river,'' 

 and later on he remarks that " the jungle of the Karun is reputed to be 

 infested with lions, but we never saw one." 



On the completion of the expedition down the Euphrates, the steamer 

 " Euphrates " was taken up the Tigris, and at Bagdad Ainsworth tells us 

 that he saw a tame lion sitting in a kufa with its owner. He also mentions 

 that near Kut the natives spoke in terror of the lion, but that though he 

 always went on shore, when the steamer was tied up for woodcutting, the 

 only large carnivora he saw was a cheeta. 



Assistant Surgeon Winchester, who was on the same trip, seems to have 

 been more fortunate in seeing lions and he writes (Memoir on the River 

 Euphrates, etc., during the late Expedition of H. 0. armed steamer 

 ''Euphrates" Rec. Bomb. Geog. Soc, Nov. 1838) that below Ctesiphon, 

 where the tamarisk was very thick on the river banks, he saw about sunset, 

 three lions basking on the river's edge. The lions were fired at, but the 

 shooting was bad and " so independent were they " notes Winchester that 

 " they did not move ! " 



The next author to mention lions is Layard, the famous explorer of the 

 ruins of Nineveh. He not only came across many lions, but also hunted 

 them with the friendly Bakhtiyari chiefs in Arabistan, of which he gives 

 interesting accounts, but of that more later. 



In 1840, on his first visit to Mesopotamia, he mentions that while they 

 were encamped on the desert side of the Tigi-is, near Mosul, they lit fires to 

 keep off the lions "which are occasionally found there in the jungle in this 

 part of Mesopotamia ", and at Tekrit his raftsman would not stop during 

 the night "for fear of marauders and thieves and also he averred lions, 

 which are occasionally, but very rarely, found so far north on the banks of 

 thn Tigris " (Autobiography, vol. 1). 



In 1841 Layard saw a lion which had done much damage in the plain 

 of Ram Hormuz and had eventually been killed by a detachment of the 

 Luristan regiment. " It was unusually large and of very dark brown 

 colour in some parts of its body almost approaching black." He goes on 

 to say that " The lion has not, I believe, been known to traverse the high 

 chain of the Luristan mountains into the valleys of the Persian side.* 

 In the plains of Khuzistan its usual places of concealment are the brush- 

 wood and jungle on the banks of the rivers and streams and in the rice 

 fields." (Early Adventures). On the desolate hills near Mt. Asemari 



* Layard apparently meant north of the Bhaktiyari mountains^ gince at this 

 time lions certainly occurred round Shiraz. 



