18 
THE LION. 
planted, so to say, on the poor animal’s hind quar¬ 
ters ;—for striking his claws deep into the neck of 
the victim, he, by a violent effort, brought its fore 
and hind quarters into such close proximity that the 
spine, as a natural consequence, was at once separated. 
He (Hans) told me, moreover, that on a certain 
occasion a lion seized one of his largest oxen by 
the muzzle, and dragged it away bodily to a dis¬ 
tance, when he killed and devoured it at his leisure. 
Thunberg’s testimony is to the like effect. “ The 
lion,” he says, “is possessed of such immense 
strength that he will not only attack an ox of the 
largest size, but will very nimbly throw it over 
his shoulders, and leap over a fence four feet high 
with it, although at the same time the ox’s legs 
hang dangling on the ground.” 
And Sparman tells us, “ that he saw a lion in the 
Cape Colony take a heifer in his mouth, and though 
the legs trailed on the ground, he carried it off as a 
cat would a rat, and leaped a broad dike without the 
least difficulty.” 
But what Montgomery Martin relates as to the 
enormous strength of the lion, is still more extra¬ 
ordinary. After stating “ that a young lion has 
been known to carry a good-sized horse a mile from 
the spot where he killed it,” he goes on to say : 
“An instance occurred in the Sneemoberg, where 
one of these beasts carried off a two-year-old heifer; 
his “ spoor ” was followed by the hunters for five 
hours, on horseback, and throughout the whole dis¬ 
tance, the carcase was ascertained to have touched 
the ground only once or twice!” 
