C. G. Schillings, phot.
IN A BETTER TEMPER.
“Lion Station” deserves its name, for in the vicinity of this spot over a hundred Indian workmen have been seized by lions. To me this was no surprise, for years before I had visited the region, and had done full justice to its wilderness in my description of it. Some stir was caused when a lion killed a European in one of the sleeping-cars at night-time. In company with two others, the unfortunate man was passing the night in a saloon carriage which had been shunted on to a siding. One of the Europeans slept on the floor; as a precaution against mosquitoes he had covered himself with a cloth. Another was lying on a raised bunk. The lion seized the third man, who was sleeping near the two others on a camp-bed, killed him, and carried him away. One of the survivors, Herr Hübner—whose hunting-box, “Kibwezi,” in British East Africa, has given many sportsmen an opportunity of becoming acquainted with African game—gave me the following account of the incident: “The situation was a critical one. The door through which the beast had entered the compartment was rolled back. I saw the creature at about an arm’s length from me, standing with its fore-paws on the bed of my sleeping friend. Then a sudden snatch, followed by a sharp cry, told me that all was over. The lion’s right paw had fallen on my friend’s left temple, and its teeth were buried deep in his left breast near the armpit. For the next two minutes a deathly stillness reigned. Then the lion pulled the body from off the bed and laid it on the ground.” The lion disappeared with the corpse into the darkness of the night. It was killed shortly after, as might be expected.
Such scenes were probably more frequent in earlier days, when, in the Orange Free State, a single hunter would kill five-and-twenty lions. This was so even down to the year 1863, when impallah antelopes (Æpyceros suara) had already become very rare in Bechuanaland, and in Natal a keen control had to be instituted over the use of arms. Times have changed. In the year 1899 much sensation was aroused by the fact that a lion was killed near Johannesburg, and so far back as 1883 there was quite a to-do over a lion that was seen and killed at Uppington, on the Orange River. To Oswald and Vardon, well-known English hunters, as well as to Moffat in Bechuanaland, the encountering of as many as nine troops of lions in a day was quite an ordinary experience, and I still found lions in surprising numbers in 1896 in German and British East Africa. The practical records of the Anglo-German Boundary Commission in East Africa, the observations made lately by Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, and the evidence of many other trustworthy witnesses, have confirmed these facts.
Although I do not think that lions, at least in districts where game is very plentiful, are so dangerous as some would make out, yet I quite agree with the statement made by H. A. Bryden that a lion-hunt made on foot must be reckoned as one of the most dangerous sports there are. The experience of an authority like Selous, who was seized by lions during the night in the jungle, proves this.
In the region in which I had such success lion-hunting in 1897, there were many mishaps. My friend the commandant of Port Smith in Kikuÿuland, who was badly mauled by lions, has since had more than one fellow-sufferer in this respect.
Captain Chauncy Hugh-Stegand, who, like Mr. Hall and so many other hunters of other nationalities, had been several times injured by rhinoceroses, was once within an ace of being killed by a lion which he encountered by night, and which he shot at and pursued. Severely wounded, and cured almost by a miracle, he had to return to England to regain his health. “Such are the casualties of sportsmen in Central and East Africa” is the dry comment of Sir Harry Johnston in his preface to the English edition of my book With Flashlight and Rifle.
When I read about such adventures I call to mind vividly my own. I live through them all again, and the magic of these experiences reawakes in me.
To-day I would fain give the reader some account of the capturing of lions. Not of captures made by means of a net, such as skilful and brave men used in olden days to throw over the king of beasts, thus disabling him and putting him in their power, but of a capture that was not without its many intense and exciting moments.
Proud Rome saw as many as five hundred lions die in the arena in one day. That was in the time of Pompey. Nearly two thousand years have passed since then, and one may safely affirm that in the intervening centuries very few lions have been brought to Europe that were caught when full grown in the desert. The many lions that are brought over to our continent are caught when young, and then reared, despite the credence given sometimes to statements to the contrary.