In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

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.