In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

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: