182 WILD ANIMALS' FEAR OF MAN. Chap. VIII. 



until calmed by the laughing assurance of our men, that 

 ^vhite people do not eat black folks ; a joke having often- 

 times greater influence in Africa than solemn assertions. 

 Some of our young swells, on entering an African village, 

 might experience a collapse of self-inflation, at the sight of 

 all the pretty girls fleeing from them, as from hideous 

 cannibals ; or by witnessing, as we have done, the conversion 

 of themselves into public hobgoblins, the mammas holding 

 naughty children away from them, and saying "Be good, or 

 I shall call the white man to bite you." 



The scent of man is excessively terrible to game of all 

 kinds, much more so, probably, than the sight of him. A 

 herd of antelopes, a hundred yards off, gazed at us as we 

 moved along the winding path, and timidly stood their ground 

 until half our line had passed, but darted off the instant they 

 " got the wind," or caught the flavour of those who had gone 

 by. The sport is all up with the hunter who gets to the 

 windward of the African beast, as it cannot stand even 

 the distant aroma of the human race, so much dreaded 

 by all Avild animals. Is this the fear and the dread of man, 

 which the Almighty said to Noah was to be upon every 

 beast of the field ? A lion may, while lying in wait for his 

 prey, leap on a human being as he would on any other animal, 

 save a rhinoceros or an elephant, that happened to pass ; or a 

 lioness, when she has cubs, might attack a man, who, passing 

 " up the wind of her," had unconsciously, by his scent, 

 alarmed her for the safety of her whelps ; or buffaloes, and 

 other animals, might rush at a line of travellers, in apprehen- 

 sion of being surrounded by them ; but neither beast nor snake 

 will, as a general rule, turn on man except when wounded, 

 or by mistake. If gorillas, unwounded, advance to do battle 

 with him, and beat their breasts in defiance, they are an 



