ch. x JOURNEY TO WEB BE SNA B ELEN RIVER 
265 
actually get it off . till he was well inside the grass. The rifle 
went off, and a loud roar followed as he galloped on, showing 
that he had been hit. The roar died away at once into a sup- 
pressed growl, then all was silence. 
Now came the work of following him up. Making a circuit 
to the right we examined the expanse of grass and jungle into 
which he had sprung ; it was very thick and extensive, stretch- 
ing to the right and left for several hundred yards, so there was 
nothing for it but to follow him through it. We first fired a 
Snider at the place where we last heard him, at the same time 
throwing sticks and shouting ; and then, foot by foot, we took 
up his path, which was bathed in blood, straight through the 
high grass. From the hurried nature of my shot I did not hope 
to have disabled him, although the rifle I had been shooting 
with was a heavy eight-bore Paradox. After going another half- 
dozen yards, as we came to a mimosa, Liban said, “ He is lying 
dead beyond that hhansa bush.” Peeping through and seeing 
a mass of yellow, I saw that Liban was right. Skirting round, 
we found a noble, yellow-maned lion, the finest I had seen, in 
perfect condition and in the prime of life. My natives called 
my attention to the peculiar position in which he was lying, 
under the farther side of the mimosa. He had bounded away from 
his lair, getting my eight-bore bullet obliquely behind the left 
lung, and out at the point of the right shoulder. He had roared 
and bounded on with this wound, and after going fifteen yards 
had taken the mimosa in one spring, falling dead in his tracks. 
We measured the bush over which he had sprung, and found it 
was eighteen feet broad and eight feet high, and absence of 
marks on the surrounding sand showed that he could not 
possibly have gone round. My idea is that the wound took 
full effect just as he made this supreme effort, landing him 
practically lifeless. The skin, when taken off, measured 10 feet 
1 1 inches from nose to tip of tail when spread without stretching 
or pegging out. As I knelt looking at his head, surrounded by 
the men, women, and children who had flocked from the karias, 
I only wished for a European companion to help admire him ! 
In the evening I made another platform in a gudd tree 
three miles to the south of camp. From my tent to about a 
mile south of it there was gravel. I found that lions, in passing 
the camp to go to prospect some karias to the south-west, avoided 
the gravel, no doubt because it was uncomfortable for their feet, 
and invariably walked over the fine red clay a little farther south. 
