416 
AFRICAN HUNTING. 
We were approaching the lion from above the 
wind, and the old brute was wide awake. On 
first perceiving him, about sixty yards off, he was 
half crouched under some thick thorns, facing me, 
and intently watching my every movement, but 
before I was on the ground to shoot he turned and 
made off, and I went after him. He went away only 
leisurely, and I might have shot at him from behind 
more than once, but I thought, if I headed him and 
got below the wind, he would stand. Eerus was 
ready to hunt him, but immediately he got the lion’s 
wind he became very much alarmed, snorting and 
very restive. The old manikin, likewise, on heading 
him, growled savagely and shot into some very dense 
underwood—his stronghold, in fact—where, without 
dogs, it would have been insanity to follow him; so 
I left him, consoling myself that, even if I had shot 
him, he was only a yellow-maned one, and his skin, 
from poverty, not worth preserving. 
It has hitherto always been my choice to be alone, 
but I now feel my solitude so much that I am deter¬ 
mined, on any future journey, to take a companion 
with me. I have two Masara boys about eight years 
old, and January, by the wagon, and that is all. The 
two former, though they understand every word, and 
are most useful and handy, are mute as mice, though 
I never speak cross to them, and they are to all ap¬ 
pearance as happy as the day is long, and make row 
enough by themselves; but when I try to converse 
with them, they hang down their heads like dogs 
