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ch. in] VICTIMS OF BIG GAME 
as more dangerous than any other animal. A man who 
has shot but a dozen or a score of these various animals, 
all put together, is not entitled to express any but the 
most tentative opinion as to their relative prowess and 
ferocity; yet on the whole it seems to me that the 
weight of opinion among those best fitted to judge 
is that the lion is the most formidable opponent of the 
hunter, under ordinary conditions. This is my own view. 
But we must ever keep in mind the fact that the surround¬ 
ing conditions, the geographical locality, and the wide 
individual variation of temper within the ranks of each 
species, must all be taken into account. In certain 
circumstances a lion may be easily killed, whereas a 
rhino would be a dangerous foe. Under other con¬ 
ditions the rhino could be attacked with impunity, and 
the lion only with the utmost hazard ; and one bull 
buffalo might flee and one bull elephant charge, and 
yet the next couple met with might show an exact 
reversal of behaviour. 
At any rate, during the last three or four years in 
German and British East Africa and Uganda over fifty 
white men have been killed or mauled by lions, buffa¬ 
loes, elephants, and rhinos, and the lions have much 
the largest list of victims to their credit. In Nairobi 
churchyard I was shown the graves of seven men who 
had been killed by lions, and of one who had been killed 
by a rhino. The first man to meet us on the African 
shore was Mr. Campbell, Governor Jackson’s A.D.C., 
and only a year previously he had been badly mauled 
by a lion. We met one gentleman who had been 
crippled for life by a lioness. He had marked her into 
some patches of brush, and, coming up, tried to put her 
out of one thick clump. Failing, he thought she might 
have gone into another thicket, and walked towards it. 
