262 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA ch. x 
yards away, but she bounded off before I had time to look over 
the sight. I fired a shot after her into the grass, which missed. 
We again tied up a donkey in the same place, and sat up over 
it. But at about ten o’clock the dry galol , upon the flat top of 
which we had placed my bed, gave way, breaking off at the fork 
of the stem, and dropping us, with guns, water-bottles, and 
lantern, a distance of twelve feet, to the ground ! It was very 
dark and a heavy thunderstorm was coming up, so we lit the 
lantern and trudged home through the bush. We left the 
donkey tied up, and coming next morning to take him away, 
found he had been untouched by lions, although several cowardly 
hyaenas had prowled round all night afraid to tackle him. 
On the morning of the 14th, having heard a lion roar not 
far from camp at midnight, I sent out horsemen, and at 9 a.m. 
they reported tracks of two lionesses. Almost simultaneously 
came news that a goat had been killed by a lion at a karia about 
five miles away. The men said it must have been a large lion 
by the tracks and by the sound of his roar as he had bounded 
away, quite unlike the voice of a lioness. So I walked there 
with my two hunters, arriving soon after ten o’clock, and taking 
the owner of the goat as guide, made straight for the karia 
where the kill had occurred. The two horsemen who brought 
the news followed, leading their horses, in red and blue khaili 
tobes ; but I dropped these men at the karia as being too con- 
spicuous and likely to attract the lion’s attention. 
We then followed the pugs of the lion from the zerfba, the 
parallel lines in the red soil showing where he had dragged his 
victim along. The trail was difficult to follow, as the ground 
had been overrun by sheep during the morning. At last we 
came to a small boy in charge of a flock of sheep, and he told 
us there were no more domestic animals farther on, and that the 
lion had gone into a dark jungle of khansa and durr grass. We 
entered the jungle, and as we rounded a khansa thicket my 
hunter Liban said, “ There he is ! ” and I saw his great shock 
head and shoulders come from out of a black overhanging khansa 
bush twenty-five yards away, which had been his lair, and in 
which we subsequently found the body of the goat. I had only 
time to see his huge head and mane come indistinctly through 
the foliage, when he bounded away to my left, across a space of 
two yards of open, into a patch of durr grass six feet high. I 
followed him with the sight of the rifle on his shoulder as he 
disappeared, but, the trigger being rather heavy, I did not 
