THE GUASO NYERO 
287 
the shell plates of one of the large river-turtles; evidently 
it took toll indifferently from among its fellow-denizens of 
the river, and from among the creatures that came to drink, 
whether beasts of pasture or the flesh eaters that preyed 
upon them. 
He also shot three buffalo bulls, Tarlton helping him to 
finish them off, for they are tough animals, tenacious of 
life and among the most dangerous of African game. One 
turned to charge, but was disabled by the bullets of both 
of them before he could come on. Tarlton, whose experi¬ 
ence in the hunting field against dangerous game had been 
large, always maintained that, although lion hunting was 
the most dangerous sport, because a hunted lion was far 
more apt to charge than any other animal, yet when a 
buffalo bull did charge he was more dangerous than a lion, 
because harder to kill or turn. Where zebra and other 
game are abundant, as on the Athi Plains, lion do not med¬ 
dle with such formidable quarry as buffalo; on Heatley’s 
farm lions sometimes made their lairs in the same papyrus 
swamp with the buffalo, but hardly ever molested them. 
In many places, however, the lion preys largely, and in some 
places chiefly, on the buffalo. The hunters of wide ex¬ 
perience with whom I conversed, men like Tarlton, Cun- 
inghame, and Horne, were a unit in stating that where a 
single lion killed a buffalo they had always found that the 
buffalo was a cow or immature bull, and that whenever 
they had found a full-grown bull thus killed, several lions 
had been engaged in the job. Horne had once found the 
carcass of a big bull which had been killed and eaten by 
lions, and near by lay a dead lioness with a great rip in her 
side, made by the buffalo’s horn in the fight in which he 
