IN JEOPARDY. 
205 
isolated position, the infants were either left to 
perish with hunger, or to be devoured by beasts 
of prey. Should a suspicion, however, arise in 
the savage bosom that these helpless innocents might 
fall into the hands of friends, they effectively pre¬ 
vented this from taking place by collecting them 
into a fold, and after raising over them a pile of 
brushwood, applied the flaming torch to it, when 
the town, but lately the scene of mirth, became 
a heap of ashes. 
“ On such an event as that described occurring,” 
Moffatt goes on to say, “ the lions scent the slain 
and leave their lair. The hyaenas and jackals 
emerge from their lurking places in broad day 
and revel in the carnage, while a cloud of vul'ures 
may be seen descending on the living and the 
dead, and holding a carnival on human flesh !” 
On another occasion Moffatt considered him¬ 
self in considerable jeopardy from a lion. After 
telling us that on one of his journeys he had slept 
in the open air, near to the door of the hut in 
which the principal man of the village and his wife 
resided, he goes on to say, “ In the morning I 
remarked to my host that it appeared some of the 
cattle had broken loose during the night, as I had 
heard something moving about on the outside of 
the thorn-fence under which I lay. 4 Oh !’ he 
replied, e X was looking at the “spoor” just now, 
it was the lion adding that a few nights pre¬ 
vious it sprang over the fence at the very place 
where I had been lying, and seized a goat, with 
which it bounded off* through another part of the 
