578 Great and Small Game of Africa 



safest in dry weather, and then the best foot-gear is the rubber tennis-shoe, 

 or the Kashmir-grass shoe. Shoes with cotton-rope soles are also good. 

 Boots make a clatter and slip. 



The Somali hunters (Midgans) shoot the leopard with poisoned arrows, 

 or catch it by setting a noose and tying up a bait, and then mobbing the 

 animal with spears. In the latter case the skins are generally badly spoilt. 

 Leopards will sometimes follow a caravan in broad daylight, in order to 

 pick up a straggling goat ; and it the marauder has been seen following 

 in this way, it may be worth while to drop behind and tie up a goat, 

 and watch in ambush for half an hour, allowing the camels to proceed. 

 Leopards follow wounded game by daylight in like manner, and the 

 writer has found a Waller's gazelle which he had wounded, lying dead, 

 struck down by a leopard. The carcase was watched for a short time, and 

 the leopard returned and was shot. In this case he had actually been 

 driven off the kill by one of the shikaris coming up. 



A remarkable instance of leopards interfering with game already bagged 

 occurred to the writer on the occasion of an elephant being killed. The 

 hunting party visited the dead elephant next morning to cut out the tusks, 

 when a leopard was seen lying asleep under the shelter of the carcase. It 

 had evidently come there for the blood. The incident was so unexpected 

 that no one was prepared to fire, and the animal escaped. In 1889 there 

 was a leopard, said to be a panther, which had haunted the Mirso ledge 

 of the Golis range for some years, and was supposed to have killed over a 

 hundred people. It was in the habit of lying in wait at a corner of a very 

 dark, rough jungle path, where huge rocks overlooked the track ; and the 

 Somalis used to show a boulder, some 6 feet high, a yard from the path, 

 in the fiat top of which was a depression shaped like a panther's body, 

 from which the beast was said to spring upon travellers. 



It a leopard could be marked down in the level grass country, dotted 

 with isolated bushes, which fringes the open prairies, good sport might be got 



