THE LION AND OTHER BEASTS OF PREY 
2.18 
Sparrman relates that a lion was once seen at the Cape to take a 
heifer in his mouth; and though the legs of the latter dragged along 
the ground, yet he seemed to carry her off with the same ease that a 
cat does a rat. He likewise leaped over a broad dike with her, without 
the least difficulty. According to the testimony of others, he can drag 
the heaviest ox with ease a considerable way; and a horse, or smaller 
prey, he finds no difficulty in throwing upon his shoulder and carrying 
off to any distance he may find convenient. 
A very young lion was seen to carry off a horse about a mile from 
the spot where he killed it. In another instance a lion having borne 
off a heifer of two years old, was followed on the spoor or track, for 
full five hours, by a party on horseback, and throughout the distance, 
the carcass of the heifer was only once or twice discovered to have 
touched the ground. 
It is singular that the lion, which, according to many, always kills 
his prey immediately, if it belongs to the brute creation, is said fre¬ 
quently, although provoked, to content himself with merely wounding 
the human species; or at least to wait some time before he gives the 
fatal blow to the unhappy victim he has got under him. A farmer, 
who had the misfortune to be a spectator of a lion’s seizing two of his 
oxen, at the very instant he had taken them out of his wagon, stated 
that they immediately fell down dead upon the spot, close to each other; 
though, on examining the carcasses afterwards, it appeared that their 
backs only had been broken. In another instance, a father and his two 
sons, being on foot near a river on their estate, in search of a lion, the 
creature rushed out upon them, and threw one of them under his feet. 
The two others, however, had time enough to shoot the lion dead on 
the spot as it had lain across the youth so dearly related to them, with¬ 
out having done him any particular hurt. 
“I myself saw,” says Sparrman, “near the upper part of Duyren- 
hoek River, an elderly Hottentot, who, at that time (his wounds being 
still open), bore under one eye, and underneath his cheek-bone, the 
ghastly marks of the bite of a lion, which did not think it worth his 
while to give him any other chastisement for having, together with his 
master (whom I also knew), and several other Christians, hunted a 
lion with great intrepidity, though without success. The conversation 
