Some Beasts and Insects 
cated. One evening about dark, I saw a young 
native man connected with the mission station 
run toward one of these old hyenas that was 
coming up a path leading from the wall to the 
/yard gate. Instead of showing fight, the beast 
turned and shuffled back to the bushes along the 
wall of the town. When I remonstrated with 
him on account of such recklessness, he laugh¬ 
ingly replied, “He is an old coward. He can’t 
even run. He goes just so,” imitating the awk¬ 
ward gait of the hyena. After they have been 
tamed by familiarity with the sight of man, as in 
this case, 1 suspect that the worst part of them is 
their prolonged howl. 
The leopard is strong, agile, stealthy and fero¬ 
cious, and the natives are much afraid of it. One 
night my hostler rushed into the house and told 
me that a leopard had just sprung over the wall, 
seized a kid near him, and then sprung back 
again. He appeared to be frightened nearly out 
of his wits. Another night one of the interpre¬ 
ters fired on a leopard as he was carrying away a 
goat, but the beast refused to give up his prey 
and replied with an angry roar. My own nerves 
were a little shaken up on one occasion. 1 was 
sitting at the table in the reception-room writing. 
Mr. Phillips had gone to a neighboring town, my 
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