86 
THE KILIMA-NJAR 0 EXPEDITION. 
hours, and will content myself with an occasional 
journey to the Zoological Gardens, where I can see 
this grandest of cats in a safe and comfortable cage. 
Soon after we had retired to rest on this occasion, 
when the men had begun to snore round their fires, 
wrapped up in dusky white cloths like so many 
mummies, and when the leader of the caravan was 
curling himself snugly between the blankets, the most 
terrific roar you ever heard startled us all into sudden 
wakefulness. Though the lion that uttered it was 
probably forty or fifty yards distant, the sound of his 
thunderous bellow seemed to come from our very 
midst. I sat up in bed and looked uneasily around 
me, but nobody complained of being eaten, so I lay 
down again, and even began to think this very interest¬ 
ing and very African, full of local colour, and so on. 
But now on our right and left, on either side of the 
river, a chorus of loud roaring began. The night 
was as yet pitchy dark, for the moon would not rise 
till the early morning. We could see nothing beyond 
the blaze of our cordon of fires. However, feeling 
that it was despicably tame to lie still in bed and go 
to sleep while my porters shivered with fear, I arose, 
took ray gun, and fired into the bushes where the 
roaring was loudest. This, the men informed me, 
was the unwisest thing I could do ; of course I killed 
nothing, and the noise of the firearm, instead of aweing 
the lions into silence, only seemed to exasperate them. 
I certainly never heard anything like the noise they 
made. My men averred that we were surrounded by 
ten beasts—I suppose they distinguished ten various 
roarings; certainly, the next morning, when we exa¬ 
mined the precincts of our camp, the many footprints 
of different sizes which were marked in the soft 
