62 
LION-HUNTING 
[CH. Ill 
slain or disabled. Among those competent to express 
judgment there is the widest difference of opinion as to 
the comparative danger in hunting the several kinds of 
animals. Probably no other hunter who has ever lived 
has combined Selous’s experience with his skill as a 
hunter and his power of accurate observation and narra¬ 
tion. He has killed between three and four hundred lions, 
elephants, buffaloes, and rhinos, and he ranks the lion as 
much the most dangerous, and the rhino as much the 
least, while he puts the buffalo and elephant in between, 
and practically on a par. Governor Jackson has 
killed between eighty and ninety of the four animals; 
and he puts the buffalo unquestionably first in point of 
formidable capacity as a foe, the elephant equally un¬ 
questionably second, the lion third, and the rhino last. 
Stigand puts them in the following order : lion, elephant, 
rhino, leopard, and buffalo. Drummond, who wrote a 
capital book on South African game, who was for 
years a professional hunter like Selous, and who had 
fine opportunities for observation, but who was a much 
less accurate observer than Selous, put the rhino as un¬ 
questionably the most dangerous, with the lion as second, 
and the buffalo and elephant nearly on a level. Samuel 
Baker, a mighty hunter and good observer, but with less 
experience of African game than any one of the above, 
put the elephant first, the rhino second, the buffalo seem¬ 
ingly third, and the lion last. The experts of greatest 
experience thus absolutely disagree among themselves ; 
and there is the same wide divergence of view among 
good hunters and trained observers whose oppor¬ 
tunities have been less. Mr. Abel Chapman, for 
instance, regards both the elephant and the rhino as 
more dangerous than the lion, and many of the hunters 
I met in East Africa seemed inclined to rank the buffalo 
