VII 
MAN-EATING. LIONS 
77 
probably killing him instantly, while the woman’s 
body had received three bullets, though she had 
probably died long before being hit by them, for 
her right shoulder and breast had been terribly 
bitten and chewed. The child’s head had been 
crushed in, evidently by one blow of the beast’s 
paw. 
III. 
While hunting in the Sultan Leanduka’s 
country, some years ago, I noticed that the natives 
always went about together in twos and threes fully 
armed, and on my asking the reason of this curious 
behaviour, Leanduka told me that his people were 
living in terror of man-eating lions, one of which 
monsters had accounted for no less than fifteen 
individuals during the rainy season. The beast, he 
said, never visited the same village on successive 
nights, but came one night here, next night there, 
another night several miles away. 
One day, as 1 was returning after an elephant 
hunt to my camp near this village, I was met, 
some miles from home, by a native who, in great 
distress, informed me that on the afternoon of the 
previous day a lion had killed his brother and his 
brother’s two wives, while they were on their way ' 
from one village to another. On returning to camp, I 
immediately set forth on the tracks of the beasts, but 
