5 7' 



Great and Small Game of Africa 



to provide them with food, leopards may be found. They are perhaps 

 more strictly nocturnal in their habits than lions, seldom leaving their lairs 

 before it is quite dark, and returning before dawn. Occasionally, however, 

 they may be seen sunning themselves high up on a rocky kopje or on 

 some mountain spur, and at such times I have seen them playing together 

 in a charming manner. Their lairs are often made at a considerable 

 distance from water, but, as they do not seem to evince partiality for any 

 particular surroundings, they turn up at times and in places where least 

 expected ; and when disturbed, they creep away so stealthily that it is 

 difficult to obtain a shot at them. They are far more silent than lions, 

 particularly the hill leopard ; occasionally they utter low moaning grunts, 

 but their ordinary cry, repeated three or four times in the same key, is 

 extremely harsh. I have heard bushbuck, when they wind or hear a 

 leopard at night, utter loud warning barks, the signal being instantly 

 caught up and passed on rapidly from one to another throughout the 

 whole length of a kloof. Leopards, although, like lions, quite content to 

 eat carrion sometimes, have undoubtedly a greater craving for warm blood. 

 In the hill country bushbuck, duiker, monkeys, dassies, etc., are their 

 principal prey, but in the low country larger animals are overpowered. A 

 male baboon, bush-pig boar, and a bushbuck ram will occasionally make a 

 good fight before they succumb. 1 Leopards cover great distances at night 

 when in search of prey. When quartered near native villages they exact 

 a heavy toll of calves, goats, and dogs ; and amongst a flock of sheep or 

 goats will strike down their victims right and left, as if impelled by sheer 

 love of slaughter. They display great cunning and boldness in abstracting 

 dogs — to the flesh of which they are very partial — from a village or camp. 

 I have not, however, yet met with a single true man-eating leopard in 

 Africa. Their mode of attack is very similar to that of a lion. Either they 

 lie in wait in the jungle on a river-bank and seize their victims as they 



1 See /;/ Haunts of Wild Game. 



