THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
Pausanias tells us of a Greek athlete, Polydamas, who slewa 
lion at the foot of Mt. Olympus, although he was unarmed. 
In the palmy days of the Roman Empire every prominent 
city had its corps of bestiarii, men whose business it was to fight 
wild beasts in the arena for the amusement of the crowd; but 
we have no information as to their methods. A Hamran 
Arab of western Abyssinia does not hesitate even now, when 
necessary, to face the lion on foot, armed only with a sword 
and small shield, and in that wonderfully interesting book 
‘Wild Beasts and their Ways,’ Sir Samuel Baker describes 
how on one occasion one of his Arab hunters did precisely 
that, and saved the lives of both, for as this determined fellow 
marched slowly forward the lion, instead of rushing to attack, 
crept like a coward into impenetrable thorns, and was seen 
no more. 
Such incidents give color to the contemptuous view which 
Livingstone and some others have taken of the lion, which they 
brand as anything but noble —as an arrant cow- 
ard, in truth. Livingstone writes that nothing he 
ever learned of the lion could lead him to attribute to this ani- 
mal either the ferocious or the noble character so often ascribed 
to it; and tells us how hardly he tried, even with the aid of 
dogs, to persuade one he had chased into some reeds to come 
out and show itself — and be shot! The lion’s refusal here 
seems not so much an evidence of poltroonery as of good sense, 
—that discretion permitted to the most valorous without 
stain on their reputations. Many a hunter has had an experi- 
ence like that of R. Gordon Cumming, who, with mounted 
helpers and a pack of dogs, drove a lion for hours from shelter 
to shelter, along a river, before he succeeded in shooting it 
while the harried beast was trying to get away by swimming 
the broad stream. Cumming assures us, also, it was an animal 
in the prime of life, with a rank mane and a perfect set of teeth 
— “a thing which in lions of his age is rather unusual.” 
106 
Character. 
