CHAPTER III MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH LIONS
For many thousands of years lions have appeared in literature and art as savage and ferocious animals. For about that length of time man has been attacking lions and when the lions fought back man has set down this judgment against them. At the same time, with the criticism of his savagery, man has put in all his records testimony to the courage, strength, and fighting qualities of what has been called through the ages the King of Beasts.
The lion's savagery is very much the same as man's—that is, he kills other animals for food and not having developed any specialized industries like the packers, each lion kills for himself. His day's work, instead of getting money to buy food, consists chiefly in getting food, and he goes about it something in this manner. About dusk he comes out from his resting place, yawns, stretches, and looks about for something to eat. In East Africa his favourite diet is zebra, but he likes any of the game animals, and he prefers the larger animals to the smaller antelope because the larger ones are easier to catch. His intention is to get his food the easiest and quickest way. He goes out on the plains and by scent, sight, and hearing locates a herd of zebra, for example. He then gets down wind from what he hopes will be his next meal and stalks to within rushing distance. He can outrun a zebra for a short distance, and when within striking distance he makes a sudden dash. I think that the zebra is thrown by the lion's spring and then killed by a bite in the back of the neck, but this impression is from deduction and not from observation. I have seen a lot of animals that lions had killed but I never saw a lion in the act of killing. In fact, the methods which lions use in hunting are not known in detail from observation, for not enough instances have ever been witnessed and recorded to make the basis for any general statement which could be considered scientifically accurate.
When he has captured his animal the lion will eat and then lie near it perhaps all night, perhaps all the next day, if he is not disturbed, eating as he desires. If he leaves his kill the jackals, hyenas, and vultures will clean it up immediately, and as the lion kills for food and not for sport or the pleasure of killing, he is content with one kill as long as the meat lasts.
The lion group, as I have designed it for the Roosevelt African Hall, will show in the foreground a trickling stream where the lions have come at dawn to drink, while, at a distance on the plains, the vultures and jackals are approaching the kill the lions have just left.
Lion hunters are not agreed about how much lions depend on sight, on sound, and on smell. It is not altogether easy to tell how soon they know the presence of man or of other animals, for they do not always show what they know. For instance, I once had the startling experience of getting within three feet of a lioness before she moved. She, of course, knew I was there long before I got that close, and yet until I almost stepped on her she made no sign. There is, however, no question but that the lion has a sharp, far sight in the daytime, and from the size of the pupil and his nocturnal habits of hunting I think he has unusually keen sight at night. I have never seen any indication that a lion has the keen smell of a dog or any animal that hunts by scent, nor have I ever seen anything to make me believe that he has any abnormal sense of hearing.
While many things about lions' habits are controversial, I think that practically everyone who has had experience with them will agree that they are not savage in the sense of killing for the mere sake of killing. There are a few isolated cases which seem to conflict with this statement, but the great mass of testimony confirms it. There was a seeming exception to this rule which happened to an English traveller and his wife in Somaliland. They were intent on getting a lion by "baiting"—that is, they killed an animal and left it as bait for the lions while they hid in a thorn boma which they built near by. There was only a small hole in the boma through which to watch and shoot. They stationed a black boy at this hole to watch while they slept. They awoke to find that a lion had stuck his head into the hole and killed the black boy—bitten his head clear off, so the local story goes. However, no one knows why the lion killed the boy in this case for, of the three possible witnesses, two were asleep and the third dead.
It is possible, of course, that the lion deliberately attacked the boma without provocation, but it seems unlikely, for lions are driven to these extremities chiefly by hunger; and in this case the lion could have satisfied his hunger by the bait that had been laid out for him. The usual man-eater is an old lion, who in the season of scattered game finds it impossible with his failing strength and speed to catch animals for food. To keep from starving he attacks the native flocks and herds, or the natives themselves. The most famous man-eaters, the lions of Tsavo, which spread such terror as almost to stop construction on a part of the Uganda railway, were, indeed, an exception to the rule. Colonel Patterson, whose classic account of them is one of the great animal stories of the world, accounted for these young, vigorous animals becoming man-eaters because some of the coolie workers who died were put in the bush unburied and the lions had acquired a taste for human flesh by eating these bodies. After this taste was acquired these lions hunted men just as the ordinary lion hunted zebras. They made a regular business of it. It was their daily fare, and they took a terrible toll before they were finally killed. But these lions were killing for food just as if they were killing zebras.
Even when forced to fight, the lion is not vindictive. If an elephant gets a man he is likely to trample on his victim and mutilate him even after he is dead. I have never known of lions doing this. On the other hand, as soon as their adversary is dead, often as soon as he is quiet, they will let him alone. The game animals on which the lions are accustomed to feed corroborate this characteristic. They know that the lion kills for food at night and they likewise know that he kills only for food, so in the daytime they do not bother about lions particularly. I have seen lions trot through a herd of game within easy striking distance of many of the animals without causing any disturbance.
So far as I know, except for the comparatively few man-eaters, lions are never the aggressors. More than that, they prefer to get out of the way of man rather than fight him, and they will put up with a good deal of disturbance and inconvenience and even pain before they will fight. But once decided to fight they will fight with an amazing courage even if there are plenty of opportunities to escape.
I had an experience which showed both these aspects of a lion's nature. Frederick M. Stephenson, John T. McCutcheon, the cartoonist, Mrs. Akeley, and I were hunting lions. I had a moving-picture camera and the others were armed with guns. One day the natives rounded up a lioness in a patch of uncommonly tall, thick grass. The beaters hesitated to go in after her, so I took a gun and McCutcheon and I joined the porters, leaving Stephenson and Mrs. Akeley outside. The grass was so thick that we had to take our rifles in both hands and push the grass down in front of us and then walk on it. We had made some progress in this manner when suddenly, as we were pushing down the grass, it was thrown violently back, jerking our rifles up and almost throwing us over. It was the lioness. We had pressed the grass down right on her back. Yet despite this intrusion she made off and did not attack us.
As she went out of the grass into the open, Stephenson shot at her and missed. Some of the boys rode after her on horseback and rounded her up in another patch of cover. By this time, however, her patience had run out. She could have run some more had she wanted to, but she didn't want to. When Stephenson approached the cover with his gun boys she took the initiative and charged. His first shot stopped her a second, but she came on again. His second shot killed her.
My first black-maned lion showed the same characteristics. He, too, preferred peace to war, although I originally disturbed him with his kill, but finally, when he declared war, although he was badly wounded, he preferred to charge two white men and thirty natives rather than try to escape.
I had gone up on the Mau Plateau to shoot topi. The plateau is about 8,000 feet above sea level there and I didn't expect to find any lions. One day I discovered two topi in a little valley between two gentle rises. I was crawling up to the top of one of the rises overlooking the valley to get a shot when I noticed some movement in the grass on the slope opposite. I thought it was another topi. As I raised myself a little to shoot I noticed that the original pair that I was hunting were gazing with fixed attention toward some movement on the far hillside. I looked again and saw an old lion get up and walk to the top of the hill, turn round facing me, and lie down to watch the valley from his side as I was watching it from mine. We were about 400 yards from each other. In the valley between were the topi, and also I noticed a dead zebra. Evidently I had disturbed him at his previous night's kill. My pony and gun boys were some distance behind and I had only one cartridge left in my double-barrelled cordite rifle. Under these conditions I reluctantly decided to go back for proper equipment. My reluctance was not merely at losing a lion but at losing that particular lion, for he had a great black mane and no one had killed a black-maned lion in that part of Africa.
By the time I got back with my cartridges and the gun boys, he had disappeared. We began beating about to see if we could find him or his trail, but without success. We did, however, find the remains of several kills, which led me to think that this single old fellow had found the neighbourhood good hunting, and was making a more or less prolonged stay. Under the circumstances I felt it wise to go to camp and get my companion, Shaw Kennedy, and our thirty beaters to hunt him out the next day.
Before going, however, I planned a campaign. Not far from where the lion had been a ravine began, which ran some distance and ended in a thick piece of forest. The sides of the ravine were covered with clumps of thick bush. Into one of these I felt sure the lion had retreated. Unless closely pushed he would not go into the forest. My plan was to enter the ravine the next day at the forest end so that he could not escape to safety among the trees, and drive up the ravine to force him out into the open.
When we got to the edge of the forest the next morning Kennedy and I drew lots for the choice of position. He won and chose the upper end of the ravine toward which we were to drive, while I was to follow up behind the beaters to get him if he broke back. Of course we were not sure that our quarry was even in the neighbourhood, but I had great hope of everything except getting this first black-maned specimen myself, for Kennedy's position made it almost certain that he would get the animal if any one did. The first patch of bush that the beaters tackled was about 100 yards long and 50 yards wide. As they set up their usual racket before entering I thought I heard a lion's grunt, but as nothing more developed I concluded it had been merely some of the boys. This patch of bush was a mass of nettles, briers, and thorns, and made exceedingly disagreeable going. The porters were making very slow progress, so I went in to encourage them. However, by the time we were halfway through I was so scratched and torn that I quit and went out toward the bottom of the ravine. The briers had somewhat cooled my faith in the theory that the lion was in the ravine. I sat down on an ant-hill where I had a fair view. Kennedy fired and I looked quickly. The lion which had come out in front of Kennedy had turned and was running down across the ravine and up the other side. I had a good shot at him and the bullet knocked him over. However, he got up and went into a clump of bush. This clump just filled a kind of pot hole about fifty yards in diameter. Kennedy watched one side and I the other so that we had every avenue of escape covered. The beaters then began throwing stones and sticks into the bush. The lion made no move. He might be dead or he might be lying close. We wanted to know, but no one wanted to know sufficiently to crawl in and see. Finally Dudo, my gun-bearer, suggested that we light a fire and make some firebrands. We busied ourselves with this. In the meanwhile, there was no response from the lion. When the firebrands were ready Dudo asked leave to throw the first one for he maintained that he knew where the lion was. Dudo threw, and as his firebrand disappeared in the brush there was a roar and a shaking of the bushes that told exactly where the beast was hidden. A shower of firebrands followed but with no effect. Then the boys threw rocks. But nothing resulted. By this time Kennedy had joined the crowd. All the beaters and both of us were grouped on one side of the pot hole. Dudo now took a small-bore rifle and fired, not in an effort to kill the lion but to move him. It succeeded, and he moved, not away from us but toward us. The way of retreat was open but he didn't take it. Dudo fired again, and again the bushes moved toward us. Finally the old fellow was so close to the edge of the brush that while we couldn't see him he undoubtedly could see us. He stood looking out on thirty black men and two white men in front of a great fire—a crowd of his enemies. The path was not blocked in any other direction. He looked us over carefully for fully five minutes and then of his own volition, with a great roar, he charged out of the brush and up from the pot hole. Halfway up the slope the fatal bullet hit him. He was killed charging his enemies and without thought of retreat—the first black-maned lion ever shot in British East Africa.
He was old and had been through various vicissitudes. At one time he had had a leg broken but it had healed perfectly. The tip of his tail was gone also. But for all that he was a great specimen.
These two instances are fair examples of the usual method of hunting lions in British East Africa. Riding after them on horseback might be considered a different method than the beating, but as a matter of fact, the two merge into each other. When beating, the lion hunter usually rides until he actually reaches the lion's cover, and if he runs on to a lion in the open he rides after it until the superior speed of the horse over any fair distance forces the lion to stop and lie down at bay. And, likewise, if one is riding after lions and the lion gets into cover, the game is up unless there are beaters to get him out.
Paul Rainey introduced an added element to the horseback method of lion hunting when he imported his lion hounds. I call them lion hounds for they chased lions—that is the only thing the pack had in common. It included curs, collies, airedales, bear hounds from the South, and almost every other kind of canine. When Rainey and the hounds appeared, the Governor of East Africa remarked that the lions were going to get some good dog meat. But within a couple of years "hounding lions" was stopped because the lions fell too easy a prey to the hounds and hunters. When Rainey took his hounds there no one was certain how the lions would act, and it was a sporting thing to try. But it soon developed—and Rainey, who is a thorough sportsman, was one of the first to see it—that the hounds kept the lion so busy once he was brought to bay that the hunter could approach and take as many shots as necessary with almost perfect immunity from a charge. It is not quite accurate to say that Rainey introduced the practice of hunting lions with dogs. Foa, the French traveller, speaks of the practice ten years before Rainey went to Africa. He even tried to organize a pack. His pack failed. But the principle of having dogs keep the lions so busy that they would not charge, he described completely.
Besides these daylight methods of hunting it was a common practice to hunt lions at night by baiting—that is, to kill an animal and hide near it in the hope that a lion would come to eat, and then shoot him. There is not much danger in this, for the thorn bomas, or hiding places, are a good protection, and the lion would not be likely to attack any one unless he was shot at or molested. There is, of course, the instance of the black man killed in the boma in Somaliland, but that event is the exception.
As a method of killing lions, night baiting is not very sportsmanlike, but as a method of photographing it is not only legitimate but it has produced by far the best lion pictures ever made in Africa—especially those of Schilling and A. Radclyffe Dugmore. Rainey and Buffalo Jones got some remarkable moving pictures of hunting lions with dogs, but the total number of all pictures of live lions ever taken is still in keeping with the small amount of detailed and accurate knowledge of lions' habits which we have. To my mind the finest lion-hunting picture ever taken was brought back by Lady Grace McKenzie. Her operator got a moving picture of a wounded lion charging. It shows the lion's rush from the bush at Lady McKenzie and her companion—a white man. It shows the man turn and run and the lion rush right by Lady McKenzie after him. There the picture ends. On his recent trip Martin Johnson got a motion picture of five lions crossing the plains, one of which was shot by Mr. Johnson.
But neither beating, baiting, nor hounding is the really sportsmanlike method of hunting lions—it is spearing, and spearing takes a black man.
One time in Uganda, after I had been under a considerable strain while elephant hunting, I decided that I needed a rest and a change. I set out for the Uasin Gishu Plateau where I got together one hundred Nandi spearmen. We had no difficulty in getting volunteers, for they were to be paid and fed for playing the game they loved. During the first half day out from the government station, where we gathered our force together, the alarm of lion was sounded. We were approaching a patch of bush. The spearmen entered the bush from all sides. I placed my motion-picture camera at a point of vantage. The idea was to drive the lion out in front of the camera and have the spearmen at that point spear him. Above the din of the spearmen in the bush I finally heard the angry growl of a leopard. There was great excitement in the bush for a few seconds. Then three of the boys came out of the bush. The middle boy of the three was being carried and his scalp was hanging down over his face. Behind this trio came a group carrying the dead leopard. Later, when his skin was stretched, it showed sixty spear holes.
I promptly took the wounded boy under the shade of a mimosa tree, shaved him, and sewed his scalp back into place and cared for his other wounds. He showed little interest in the proceedings beyond asking a question of the other black boys about what I was doing. Seemingly the whole operation was over before he recovered from the shock of his mauling. The next morning when I sent him home he was much troubled. He said that he had not committed any offence and he did not see why he had to be sent home. His wounds did not seem to trouble him or to dampen the ardour of the others in the slightest.
We went on for a week. One day, just as we were making camp near a waterfall, an alarm was sounded near the forest. One of the boys had seen a lion. His whereabouts was discovered after much beating back and forth. I got my camera ready as before at the place the boys thought the fight would take place, but the lion did not do his part. He broke in a different direction and another bunch of spearmen got him two hundred yards away. It was so exasperating to have something prevent this most exciting of all movie photography from succeeding that I almost failed to appreciate the courage and skill of the spearmen.
A few days later, soon after our start in the morning, Mrs. Akeley and I were riding ahead of the procession when we met several lions coming out of the grass and bush near a small stream. The spearmen immediately surrounded the bush into which the lions plunged. The lions tried to escape, but in whatever direction any lion tried to go a spearman bobbed up out of the grass in front of him. That is a simple statement, but to jump up in front of a lion or three lions with nothing but a spear and shield as protection is a thing not to be taken lightly. As the lions sought one escape after another, and found each closed, they fought it out. There was about ten minutes of pandemonium. Then we took stock. Three dead lions gathered together in a pile; pretty authentic reports that two others escaped—and not a picture.
At the next spearing, however, I did get two pictures. We were riding along early in the morning through a rough bush country. All at once I heard a lion grunt. The gun boy held up his hand as a signal to stop. The camera was rushed forward to the bank of a little ravine, but before it was assembled ready for the operation a lioness came up within ten feet of the camera, turned to the left, and then ran back by the same route. The boys waved to me to come down twenty-five yards. There, from a little knoll, we got the first movie record of lion spearing. A young, full-grown lion was at bay in tall grass at the bottom of the ravine. The camera trained on the place caught the first spear thrown. The first one was followed by a shower of spears, and a few seconds later the boys rushed in and got their spears. It was all over quicker than it takes to tell it. In the film not only do the falling spears show but also the movement of the lion in the grass, but the cover and a dark day made any part of the film impossible to use as a still picture. Hardly had I finished turning the handle on this scene when I was called off twenty-five yards to another lion at bay. He was held for the camera and a similar record of this one was made. In the meantime, a lone spearman making desperate effort to get into the show stumbled on an old lioness. They fought it out, man and beast together. When we discovered him he was on his back protecting himself with his shield, a single bite in his leg and the lioness dying beside him. He had killed a lioness practically alone, which entitled him to wear a lion's skin headdress.
On this trip of twenty days we had three occasions in which the spearmen rounded up five lions in a bunch and each time they got three of the five. Altogether, we got ten lions and five leopards. One boy was mauled by a leopard, another was bitten on the leg by the lion. These were the only injuries to the men. Not a shot was fired during the twenty days. Our last encounter involved five old lions, three of which were speared, and three cubs captured alive—but no pictures. It happened like this:
Three lions going up a slope, signal given, pandemonium turned loose. Movements of men looked as if the lions had gone over the hill beyond to a dry stream bed. With the heavy camera I ran down the foot of the hill when I was called back and had to run back to the top of the hill where the lion was at bay. He might have been held indefinitely there in the open sunlight—a wonderful chance for a picture. But in spite of long teaching, of threats, promises, and urging, the boys' excitement overcame them. The spears began to fly before the camera was ready. As I was adjusting the camera the lion was speared in full view in the open sunlight. A camera man never had such a chance before, but it was lost because the camera was slow. After the planning, the care, the work—the luck to have it go like this was too much, and my instinct was to grab my gun and shoot the man who threw the first spear. I think it was the most heartbreaking failure I ever had. I intended never to have another, and from that minute I began working on a camera that takes no time to adjust. I got it finally, but that one moment of poignant disappointment cost me many months of toil.
Here is the way I see this lion spearing. A naked savage gets iron ore, then he gets fire from two sticks, and then charcoal. Then he makes a retort of clay in which he smelts the iron ore. With a hunk of granite for an anvil and another for a hammer he rough forges the spear. With soft iron hammers forged in a similar way he finishes the spear which is finally sharpened on native stones. With this equipment he starts out to kill the lion that has been preying on his flocks or herds. He takes a great pride in the achievement, for he will make from the mane a headdress which his exploit entitles him to wear. Of course this does not happen just this way now, but the Nandi's spearmen speared lions with the arms they made before the white men came. It is a fair contest between man and beast. And the courage and skill of these men are wonderful.
Paul Rainey had a ranch on the west shore of Lake Naivasha. One morning his boys reported to him that a lion had invaded the kraal the night before. He set out on horseback with a few of his dogs and two Masai herd boys with their spears. The dogs soon took up the spoor of the lion and brought him to bay under an acacia tree on the grassy plain. The sun had just risen above the hills on the other side of the lake. The long shadows of the table-top acacias lay across the plain, the lion underneath in full sunlight. Rainey jumped off his horse, threw the reins over a bush, and grabbed his rifle from its boot. He then saw the two Masai boys run on toward the lion. As they approached the lion, one threw his spear and missed. They were between him and the lion, and he could not shoot. The boys stood stock still till the lion was in mid-air in his final spring when the one with the spear stepped to one side and thrust his spear into the lion's neck killing him instantly. He fell at their feet. As the boy withdrew the spear and carefully wiped the blood off on the corner of his breechcloth he remarked to Rainey:
"You see, Master, it is work for a child."
That is how the Masai figured it. But I never have felt so. The first wild lion I ever saw scared me almost to death, and a good many of them have scared me since. The first lions that I saw were in Somaliland.
An oryx hunt had just come to a close. We were about to mount our ponies when one of the black boys pointed. There were three lions walking quietly across a patch of hard, dry sand. They were perhaps a hundred yards away. They looked as big as oxen to me. I had never before seen a lion outside of a cage. We turned our ponies over to the Somali gun boys who galloped after them to round them up. My next view of the lions was when the beaters had gone in to drive them out of a bit of jungle. A roar came from immediately in front of me and I saw a lioness in mid-air as high as my head, springing, thank heaven, diagonally away from me. But she saw me as she sprang and landed facing me. As I fired, a lion jumped over her back, which so disconcerted me that my shot only wounded her. This lion disconcerted her, too, for she followed him. Two more shots at her and she disappeared in another clump of cover with the lions. In our efforts to drive them out of this cover we finally set it on fire. The two lions rushed out and escaped us. The lioness, more seriously wounded than I thought, never came. I had failed to get a lion, but I felt satisfied none the less, because the lions had likewise failed to get me. That one moment in that day, when I saw the lioness in the air, I'll never forget, for I realized that death was but an instant away.
From that time until now I have seen a great many lions, shot some, and handled nearly fifty specimens, so that I have made a fairly extended study of the measurements and anatomy of the king of beasts. I have tried also to study his living characteristics and habits, but that is much more difficult. After all, perhaps the most impressive thing about a lion is his foreleg. The more you know of elephants the more you regard the elephant's trunk. The more you know of lions, the more you respect the lion's foreleg and the great padded and clawed weapon at the end of it. It is perhaps the best token of the animal's strength. It is probably two or three times as powerful in proportion to weight as the arm of a man. He can kill a man with one blow of his paw. His other weapon, his jaw, is strong enough to break a zebra's neck at one bite. These are a rather rough measure of an animal's strength, but they give some idea of it.
There is a record which says that a lion has dragged an African buffalo fifty yards. A buffalo weighs at least three times as much as a lion. I have never had evidence of this much "pulling power" but I have known of many instances of lions dragging zebras that far, and the zebras weigh nearly twice as much as the lions do.
Another test of a lion's strength is his ability to stand punishment. I have seen a lion charge with seven lead bullets from an old .577 Express rifle through his shoulder, and only finally succumb to the eighth bullet in his head.
L. J. Tarlton, one of the best shots that has ever hunted game in Africa, told me once, when we were both recuperating from sickness, that he was going to quit shooting lions. What had brought him to this conclusion was an experience which he had just had with a charging lioness. He had hit her three times in the chest. She finally died touching his feet. When he examined her, all three bullets were within a three-inch radius and every one should have been fatal. Yet she had almost reached him despite his fast and accurate shooting.
These instances are exceptions, but often in African hunting the exceptions are about as common as the rule and one exception may be enough to end the story.
My nearest approach to being mauled by a lion came from this same capacity of a lion to carry lead, and from my own carelessness. I had seen a lion standing some little distance away from me clearly in view, and had shot him. The bullet knocked him down and, as I thought, hurt him badly. After a while he got up and came my way. When about forty yards away he gave me another clear shot. So without reloading the first barrel of my double-barrelled rifle I fired the second. I hit him again, but not with the desired result. He charged. There I was with an empty gun to meet the charge of a wounded lion, and with no one else, not even a gun boy, near. All the rules of lion hunting say that you must meet a charge without moving. But all the promptings of instinct were to move, and I moved. I slipped to one side behind a clump of high grass as fast as I could, endeavouring meanwhile to reload. A few seconds after I had left the spot where I should have stood the lion's spring landed him directly on it. He had had to come through a little depression, and this and the long grass had obscured his sight so he had not seen me move. Not landing on me as he expected so disconcerted him that, even though he saw me, he dived into the thick bushes right ahead of him instead of coming at me. There he stopped, threatening for a time to repeat his charge. Finally, changing his mind, he headed deeper into the brush and, as it was too thick to follow him, I let him go. In the mix-up my syce had become so completely frightened that he had jumped into the river, so he was quite unable to tell whether the lion had got my pony or the pony had run away. After a certain amount of fruitless searching I walked the ten miles back to camp.
The usual movement of a lion is a walk or a kind of fox trot. At speed he will still continue to trot except at maximum effort, when he gallops.
Lions do not usually have any habitation; but occasionally they live in caves. When I say live, I do not mean that they inhabit them continuously. They roam about, following the movements of the game. If they happen to be working in a country where there is a cave, they will use it while in the neighbourhood. But a given band of lions usually stays in one place only a short time. The phrase "band of lions" is perhaps not very accurate. Lions go in all kinds of combinations of numbers. There is a cave on the MacMillan ranch near Nairobi from which sixteen lions have been seen to come. Personally I have never seen more than eight lions together, but I have seen almost all combinations of numbers, ages, and sexes below that number. Lions are more often in twos, threes, or fours than in other combinations.
But although I know that lions are accustomed to roam after game, one of the most interesting lion encounters I ever had came from acting on exactly the opposite theory.
There is a place where a little stream flows into the Theba River, where, in 1906, I was looking for buffalo and heard the snarling of two lions. We stopped the buffalo hunt momentarily to locate the lions. We started at the river bank to drive up the small stream toward the higher land and the open. The beaters began their work with their usual noises, which I checked as soon as possible for fear that the lions would go out too far ahead of us to get a shot. I instructed the beaters to go up the little stream with the cover along its banks throwing stones in ahead of them. But my precautions were too late. They had hardly started to work when I noticed on the hills a lion and a lioness—one going to the left and the other to the right. They were in the open. The lion disappeared over the crest of the first hill. I had a theory that he would lie down on the top of that crest and watch us. I accordingly left part of the men in sight while I, with a few others, approached the hill under cover. I finally succeeded in getting to a point behind a pile of rocks. Motioning the men to stay quiet and keep back, I carefully poked my head up and saw the old fellow as he lay looking toward me about seventy-five yards away. I drew back, and then to my disgust one of my companions rose up in full view of the lion, who made off unscathed by the hurried shots I fired at him. This lion stayed constantly in my mind.
Three years later I was camped on the Tana River with Mrs. Akeley, John McCutcheon, and Fred Stephenson. When we decided to march from the Tana to the Theba I told the crowd that I was going by the spot where I had lost the big lion three years before. I had a "hunch" that he would still be there—or perhaps be revisiting the spot as I was. Anyway, the feeling was strong enough to make me go. Stephenson went off on an independent hunt. The others with the safari came with me. We loitered along photographing rhinoceroses until we came in sight of my spot—the place where the little stream emptied into the Theba. I noticed that Stephenson was coming toward us and about to cross the little stream. I remarked, "Fred is going to drive our lions out and never know it." I then felt a little foolish but nevertheless watched him go through my pet lion bed. Only a few minutes later McCutcheon pointed toward the upper end of the stream and said:
"What is that?"
"My pair of lions," I answered.
They were going up the hill exactly as they had three years before except this time they did not separate. We watched them to the top of the hill. We started out to head them off. As we reached the top of the hill to one side of where they had gone, we heard a lion grunt behind us. There, about a hundred and twenty-five yards away, were the lion and lioness apparently in a very nasty humour. We all crouched down, and as we did so the lions rose up to see us. I said to Mrs. Akeley:
"Shoot whenever you are ready."
I was pretty nervous, for a couple of mad lions in the grass make a very bad outlook.
She fired and missed clean. The lioness began lashing her flanks. Mrs. Akeley fired again. The lion fell dead with a bullet through his brain.
McCutcheon and I urged each other to shoot the lioness, who, in the meantime, bolted and got away. I have handled nearly fifty lions, but this one that Mrs. Akeley killed was the largest of all and he had a good yellow mane. I can't prove that it was the same pair I had seen three years before. What we know of lions is against it, but I still like to think it was. This was Mrs. Akeley's first lion—a splendid trophy, cleanly killed.