CHAPTER IV 
A LION-DRIVE ON LAKE NAKURU 
Lions were not specially included in our programme 
or our ambitions when we first landed in British East 
Africa; for much time expended in vain and many 
uncomfortable hours endured during my previous expe¬ 
dition (in South Africa) in the effort to bag a lion had 
driven home the conclusion that to secure the king of 
beasts was beyond my powers. But dis aliter visum. 
Lions, it may here be remarked, are still sufficiently 
numerous in British East Africa, especially in those 
regions where antelopes, zebra and other game so 
greatly abound, such as the Athi Plains and parts of 
the great Rift Valley. During our three months 
sojourn in East Africa in 1904 we had several camps 
at which we heard lions calling almost every night, yet 
never, that year, did we personally see one alive, except 
on the single occasion which I here propose to relate. In 
South Africa I enjoyed one glimpse of a lion, and the 
rough sketch made in my note-book of that sight, 
which, cursory as it was, must always remaiu a notable 
memory, is here translated by Mr. Caldwell. 
It is, perhaps, needless to remark that lions do not 
roar when hunting at night. It would be a very foolish 
beast that did so. Their note at night is better de¬ 
scribed as a call—a sort of deep, crescendo, resonant 
cough—and one hears a second, often a third, cough, 
each further away than the other, showing that the beasts 
are hunting in concert in a wide wing, and thus they 
maintain touch with each other. When lions do roar 
is on returning homewards full, towards daylight, at 
40 
