THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
some; and then would be seen a grand display of savage war- 
fare, in which the enemy’s magnificence of rage and power 
against overwhelming odds would surpass anything imagined 
of him. Drummond draws a thrilling picture of such a com- 
bat, and Freeman, Baker, and others confirm its truth. 
Some of these animals show amazing boldness in their noctur- 
nal forays. The story of the lion which leaped upon Gordon 
Cumming’s *’ party, and seized one of two men sleeping under 
the same blanket beside the fire, is familiar to all readers of 
adventure tales. The history of frontier Africa abounds in 
similar bloody incidents, and makes it plain that at times noth- 
ing daunts the great 
beast. Gibbons, for 
example, says that 
a lion gnawed 
through a palisade 
of stakes of the 
thickness of aman’s 
arm to get at cattle 
and human beings 
in a kraalhe visited. 
Nevertheless the 
strength, though 
astonishing, has been overstated. One is certainly able to 
drag away into the bushes the carcass of a big buffalo; but 
Baker, one of the sanest and best-informed of men, refuses 
assent to the storics of lions leaping high fences with buffaloes 
in their jaws; or that they could even carry anything approach- 
ing its weight. The Tsavo lions, described below, jumped 
no fences with their victims, but dragged them through the 
hedges; but one was known to take away three full-grown 
goats and a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound iron rail to which 
they were tied. 
Man-eaters have never been so numerous in Africa as in the 
118 
THE KING RESTs. 
