10 THE PLEISTOCENE AGE [ch. i 
engaged, some ten or twelve years back, in building the 
Uganda Railway. He was in charge of the work, at a 
place called Tsavo, when it was brought to a complete 
halt by the ravages of a couple of man-eating lions, 
which, after many adventures, he finally killed. At the 
dinner at the Mombasa Club I met one of the actors 
in a blood-curdling tragedy which Colonel Patterson 
relates. He was a German, and, in company with an 
Italian friend, he went down in the special car of one of 
the English railroad officials to try to kill a man-eating 
lion which had carried away several people from a 
station on the line. They put the car on a siding. As it 
was hot, the door was left open, and the Englishman 
sat by the open window to watch for the lion, while the 
Italian finally lay down on the floor and the German 
got into an upper bunk. Evidently the Englishman 
must have fallen asleep, and the lion, seeing him through 
the window, entered the carriage by the door to get at 
him. The Italian waked to find the lion standing on 
him with its hind-feet, while its fore-paws were on the 
seat as it killed the unfortunate Englishman; and the 
German, my informant, hearing the disturbance, leaped 
out of his bunk actually on to the back of the lion. 
The man-eater, however, was occupied only with his 
prey; holding the body in his mouth, he forced his 
way out through the window-sash, and made his meal 
undisturbed but a couple of hundred yards from the 
railway-carriage. 
The day after we landed we boarded the train to take 
what seems to me, as I think it would to most men 
fond of natural history, the most interesting railway 
journey in the world. It was Governor Jackson’s 
special train, and in addition to his own party and ours 
there was only Selous; and we travelled with the 
