CHAPTER V. 
BIG GAME WHICH ROOSEVELT HUNTED IN BRITISH EAST 
AFRICA. 
The Lion and Other Beasts of Prey—The Elephant and Other Huge Thick-Skinned Animals— 
The Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus—The Royal Game—The Buffalo, the Giraffe, the 
Camel and the African Antelope—Monkeys, Crocodiles, Birds, Snakes and Other Venomous 
Reptiles. 
F OREMOST among the wild beasts of the African wilderness stands 
the lion, the King of the forests and jungles. He is exquisitely 
formed by nature for the predatory habits which he is destined to 
pursue. Though considerably under four feet in height, he is enabled, 
by means of the tremendous machinery wherewith nature has gifted him, 
to dash to the grave and overcome almost every beast of the forest, no 
matter how superior to him in weight and stature. The powerful buffalo 
and the gigantic elephant not excepted. 
The full-grown male lion is adorned with a rank and shaggy mane 
almost reaching to the ground and of a dark or golden yellow color. The 
females have no mane, being covered with a glossy coat of tawny hair. 
The color of his fur makes it almost impossible to discover him in the 
dark, where his eyes, which glisten in the night like balls of fire, are 
almost the only signs of his stealthy and silent approach. His habits are 
nocturnal. During the day he lies resting in the thickets or in some inac¬ 
cessible cave, and not until the sun sets does he start out on his search 
for prey. It is then his loud, deep-toned, solemn roars, repeated five of six 
times in quick succession, and increasing in loudness to the third or 
fourth, when it dies away in a low, deep moaning, or in five or six muffled 
sounds resembling a distant thunder, startles the forest and warns its 
denizens of the approaching danger. 
Next to the lion the leopard or panther and the hunting leopard is 
the most formidable beast of prey in the Dark Continent. His spotted 
