NIGHT-SHOOTING. 
165 
merely my own people about me, it is very likely 
I should have succeeded in dispatching this animal 
also, apparently a lioness of huge stature. 
Gordon Gumming, who frequently sojourned in 
districts where, as it would appear, lions were more 
than usually numerous, seems to have devoted much 
time to night shooting, and to have killed, among 
a multitude of other animals, several of those beasts. 
And as his adventures on more than one of these 
occasions were of an interesting nature, and are 
graphically and spiritedly told, I have taken leave 
to transfer a few to these pages. 
After describing the death of three buffaloes, 
which one night that he passed in his cc shooting- 
box,”* as he calls it, fell to his deadly rifle, he goes 
on to say : 
66 Hardly had the remainder of the herd (of buffa¬ 
loes) retreated when the sound of teeth tearing at 
the carcases of the slain was heard. At first I 
fancied it was the hyaenas, and fired a shot to scare 
them from the flesh. All was then still; and, being 
anxious to inspect the heads of the buffaloes, I went 
boldly forward, taking the native (my companion) 
along with me. We were within about five yards 
of the nearest buffalo, when I observed a yellow 
mass lying alongside of him, and at the same instant 
a lion gave a deep growl. I thought it vras all over 
with me. The native shouted £ TaoJ and springing 
# Somewhat of a misnomer; the same consisting, as he elsewhere 
tells us, “ of a hedge of bushes some three feet in height, on the top 
of which were placed dead clean old branches, all being firmly lashed 
together with strips of the thorn-bush, so as to form a clear rest for 
the rifles.” 
