♦ 
450 LIGHTNING AND RAIN — VISIT FROM A LION. 13, U Nov. 
of its preventing my examining the country as we passed along, 
we halted at an early hour of the afternoon, at a small pond just 
formed by the rain, and capable of affording us and our cattle a 
sufficiency of water till the next day. As our bleak and exposed 
situation, in the midst of an open plain, without the shelter of a 
tree, or scarcely a bush, made it difficult to restrain the oxen from 
straying away in the night, we placed the waggons in a circle, and 
connected them together by the trektouws ; to which, and to the 
wheels, our cattle were made fast with reims. 
Towards evening, thunder-clouds collected in every quarter, 
and the night became excessively dark ; until some . black, formid- 
able, and massy clouds, which seemed to have the solidity of rocks, 
burst open all at once, and, with very little thunder, emitted every 
instant the most vivid flashes of lightning; which, although they 
rendered for the moment every object as light and visible as by day, 
left us in the intervals blinded by impenetrable darkness. In . ad- 
dition to this, torrents of the heaviest rain poured down upon us ; 
and, if it did not throw us, as it did our cattle, into confusion, 
it impeded, however, the work which was necessary to be done, and 
left us supperless, through the difficulty of keeping up a fire for 
cooking. 
Such nights I already knew, by dear-bought experience, favour 
the prowling lion, and seem to give him a spirit of daringness which 
he seldom evinces at other times. Taking advantage of the disorder 
and confusion into which the other animals are thrown by the con- 
flicting elements, which make no impression upon him, he appears 
to advance upon them with less caution than usual. This, at least, 
was now found to be the case ; for at a little after nine, while all 
of us were lying in the waggons, the dogs commenced a barking and 
howling ; the whole of the oxen suddenly made efforts to get loose, 
and began to express that peculiar kind of uneasiness which, in 
a very intelligible manner, told us that a lion was not far off. There 
is probably something in the smell of this beast quite different from 
that of others, by which, at a great distance, especially if to wind- 
ward, his prey perceive his approach, and are warned to escape their 
