94 
THE LION. 
but little molestation, I have often encountered 
him, even when the day has been well advanced, 
either in pursuit of game, or devouring the carcase 
of some animal he has slain during the past night, 
but of which time had not permitted him to eat his 
fill. 
He may, moreover, be seen in the day-time 
fraternising, so to say, with the various species of 
antelope, which in numbers, literally innumerable, 
feed amicably together on the extensive prairies, 
or savannahs, intersecting the forests of Southern 
Africa. Scenes of this kind, which remind us of 
what we read in the Bible, as to “ the lion and the 
lamb lying down together,” are not unfamiliar to 
the traveller, but by no one better or more graphi¬ 
cally described than by Delegorgue, who says : 
“ Hardly had we finished our labours,” in allusion 
to the flaying of a lion the party had just killed, 
C£ when we saw three other large lions, with grave 
mien and imposing presence, pacing to and fro 
amongst the herds of gnoos, &c., pasturing every¬ 
where around us. The nearest of the lions was within 
two hundred and fifty paces of the waggon. He did 
not badly represent a Caffre cheiftain counting his 
flock. The agile gnoos, without exhibiting the 
slightest fear, remained stationary, some within 
forty and others sixty paces of the master of these 
wilds; others, again, actually caracolled about him. 
I confess that this sort of confidence would have 
been looked on by me as temerity, had I not been 
well aware that the lion only bounds, and is inca¬ 
pable of contending in speed with the antelope. 
