In the daytime the lion rarely seeks to attack man. Very commonly, indeed, if a traveller happens to pass near him, he turns aside his head and affects not to see him. At the same time, if any one, walking close to the bush in which he is couched, be rash enough to cry aloud ra hena—"he is there!"—the lion will at once spring upon his denouncer and the disturber of his repose. As night comes on, his humour completely changes. When the sun has set, it is perilous to venture into a wild, woody, and broken country. It is there the lion lies in ambush—it is there he is met on the path-ways, which he intercepts by barring all further advance with his body. The Arabs thus describe some of the nocturnal scenes which are continually happening. If a solitary individual, a courier, traveller, or letter-carrier, chancing to meet a lion, possess a courage of the highest temper, he will walk straight towards the animal, brandishing his sword or gun, but carefully abstaining from using the one or the other. He simply cries out: "Oh, the robber! the highway-man! the son of a mother who never said No! Dost thou think to frighten me? Thou canst not know, then, that I am so-and-so, the son of so-and-so? Get up, and let me proceed on my journey." The lion waits till the man has come close up to him, and then goes off to lie down again a thousand paces farther on. The traveller has to endure a long series of terrific trials. Each time that he quits the path, the lion disappears, but only for an instant. Directly afterwards he again presents himself, and all his movements are accompanied by horrible noises. He breaks off innumerable branches with his tail. He roars, howls, growls, and emits gusts of poisonous breath. He plays with the subject of his fantastic and manifold attacks, and keeps him constantly suspended between fear and hope, like a cat playing with a mouse. If a man involved in such a difficulty does not allow his courage to fail him, if—to use an Arab phrase—he succeeds in firmly holding his soul, the lion will finally leave him, and seek his fortune elsewhere. But if, on the contrary, the latter perceives that he has to deal with a man whose countenance betrays his fear, whose voice trembles, and who dares not articulate a word, he repeats over and over again, in order to terrify him still more, the manœuvre above described. He will approach him, push him out of the way with his shoulder, cross his path every other minute, and amuse himself with him in various ways, until at last he devours his victim already half dead with terror.
There is really nothing incredible in the facts thus stated by the Arabs. The ascendancy of courage over animals is indisputable. The professional robbers who roam abroad at night, armed to the teeth, instead of shunning the lion, cry out to him if they meet with him: "I am not what thou seekest. I am a robber like thyself; pass on, or, if it please thee, let us rob in company." It is said that the lion sometimes follows them, and attempts an assault on the douar towards which they are bending their steps. It is even affirmed that this good understanding between the robbers and the lions frequently displays itself in a striking manner. Robbers have been seen, when taking their meals, to treat the lions as other people treat their dogs, and throw to them at a certain distance the feet and entrails of the animals they themselves are eating.
Women likewise have been known successfully to have recourse to intrepidity in opposing a lion. They have run after him when engaged in carrying off a ewe, and have forced him to let go his prey by giving him a shower of blows with a cudgel, crying aloud all the time: "Ah, robber! son of a robber!" The Arabs say that the lion is seized with shame, and makes off as quickly as possible. This trait shows that in the eyes of the Arabs the lion is a peculiar sort of creature midway between men and beasts, which, by reason of its strength, appears to them to be endowed with a special order of intelligence. The following legend, intended to explain how it is that the lion allows a sheep to escape him more easily than any other prey, is a confirmation of this belief. Enumerating one day the various feats his strength enabled him to accomplish, the lion remarked: "An sha Allah—if it be the will of Allah—I can carry off a horse without distressing myself. An sha Allah, I can carry off a heifer, without being prevented from running by its weight." But when he came to the ewe, he deemed it so much beneath him that he omitted the pious formula, "if it be the will of Allah;" and, to punish him, Allah condemned him to be never able to do more than drag it along.
There are several modes of hunting the lion. When one makes his appearance in the midst of a tribe, his presence is indicated by a multitude of signs of all kinds. The earth shakes, as it were, with roarings. Then a series of losses and accidents take place. A heifer, or a colt is carried off, or a man is missing. The alarm spreads through all the tents. The women tremble for their property and for their children. Lamentations arise on all sides, and the hunters decree the death of their troublesome neighbour. It is published in the market-places that on such a day and at such an hour, all who are capable of joining in the chace, whether on horseback or on foot, must assemble in arms at an appointed spot. Prior to this, the thicket has been discovered to which the lion retires during the day. Everything being ready, the hunters set out, the men on foot leading the way. When they have arrived within fifty paces of the bush in which they expect to find the enemy, they halt and await him. Closing up, they form three deep, the second rank ready to fill up the gaps in the first if succour be necessary, while the third, firm and compact, and composed of capital marksmen, forms an invincible reserve. Then commences a strange spectacle. The front rank begin to insult the lion, and even send a few balls into his hiding place to make him come out: "Look at him who boasts of being the bravest of all, and yet dares not show himself before men! It is not he—it is not the lion—it is a cowardly thief, and may Allah curse him!" The animal sometimes comes while they are abusing him in this manner, and, looking round serenely on all sides, yawns and stretches himself, and appears perfectly insensible to what is passing around him.
One or two balls now hit him, upon which, magnificent in his audacity, he stalks forth and stands in front of the bush which sheltered him. Not a word is spoken. The lion roars, rolls his glaring eyes, draws back, crouches down, again rises up, and by the movements of his tail and body snaps off all the branches that surround him. The front rank discharge their pieces, whereupon the monster bounds forward, and generally falls dead beneath the fire of the second rank, who step forward and fill up the intervals left in the first. This is the critical moment, for the lion resigns the contest only when a ball has struck him in the head, or in the heart. It is no rare thing to see him continue the fight with ten or a dozen balls through his body. In other words, he is seldom overpowered until he has killed or wounded some of his foot assailants. The horsemen who accompany the expedition have nothing to do, so long as their foe does not quit the broken ground. Their part commences when, as occasionally happens, the men on foot have succeeded in driving out the lion upon a plateau, or into the plain. The combat then assumes a new aspect, full of interest and originality. Each horseman, according to his hardihood and agility, spurs on his horse at full speed, fires at the lion as at an ordinary mark, at a short distance, and, wheeling his horse round the moment he has fired, gallops off to reload his piece before making a second assault. The lion, attacked on all sides and wounded at every moment, faces about in every direction, rushes forward, flees, returns, and falls, but only after a glorious struggle. His defeat, indeed, must inevitably terminate in his death, for against horsemen mounted on Arab horses success is impossible. He makes but three terrific bounds, after which his pace is by no means swift, and an ordinary horse will distance him without trouble. To form a just idea of such a combat, it is absolutely necessary to have witnessed one. Every horseman hurls an imprecation; there is a wild confusion of sounds, the burnouses fly out, the powder thunders, the hunters crowd together or scatter widely apart. The lion roars, the balls whistle, and the whole forms a scene of movement and animation. But notwithstanding all this tumult, accidents are very unusual. The hunters have little to fear, unless a fall from their horse throws them under the paw of their enemy, or—which is more frequent misadventure—they are hit by a friendly but ill-directed ball.
Such is the most picturesque, the most warlike aspect that lion-hunting assumes. Other measures, however, are sometimes adopted, both more sure and more speedily efficacious. The Arabs have observed that on the morrow after he has carried off and devoured sheep or oxen, the lion, suffering from a weak digestion, remains in his lair, fatigued, oppressed with sleep, and incapable of moving. When a place that is usually disquieted with roaring is undisturbed for a whole night, it may be inferred that the formidable inhabitant who dwells therein is plunged in this state of lethargy. Upon this, a man of devoted courage, following the tracks that lead to the covert in which the monster is concealed, will go up to him, take a steady aim, and shoot him dead upon the spot with a ball between the two eyes. Kaddour-ben-Mohammed, of the Oulad-Messelem, a section of the Ounougha, is reputed to have killed several lions in this manner.
Recourse is likewise had to various forms of ambush. The Arabs sometimes excavate a hole in the path the lion usually takes, and cover it with thin woodwork, which the animal breaks by its weight and is caught in the trap. At other times they dig close to a dead body a hole covered by thick boards, between which a small opening is left to allow the barrel of a gun to pass through. In this hole, or melebda, the hunter squats down, and when the lion approaches the body, he takes a careful aim and fires. Not unfrequently the lion, if he has not been struck down, throws himself on the melebda, shatters the barrier, and devours the hunter behind his demolished rampart. On other occasions, again, a single man will undertake an adventurous and heroic enterprise, recalling the feats of chivalry. Si-Mohammed-Esnoussi, a man of approved veracity, who inhabited the Djebel-Guerzoul, near Tiaret, thus describes his own mode of going to work:
"I used to mount a good horse and proceed to the forest on a bright moonlight night. In those days I was a capital shot, and my ball never fell to the ground. Then I began to cry aloud several times, Ould el ataïah!—'Daughter of a mother who yields herself up!'—The lion would come forth, and direct his steps towards the spot whence issued the cry; and at that moment I fired at him. Occasionally the same thicket would contain several lions, who would issue forth all together. If one of these brutes approached me from behind, I would turn my head and fire at him over the back of my saddle, and then go off at full gallop in the fear that I might have missed him. If I was attacked in front, I wheeled my horse round and repeated the manœuvre."
The people of that district affirm that the number of lions killed by Mohammed-ben-Esnoussi amounted to nearly a hundred. This intrepid hunter was still alive in the year 1253 [A. D. 1836]. When I saw him, he had lost his eyesight. May he participate in the mercy of Allah!
A yet more dangerous sport than hunting the lion himself, is hunting a lion's cubs. There are individuals, however, adventurous enough to undertake even this hazardous enterprise. Every day, about three or four in the afternoon, the lion and lioness quit their lair to make a distant reconnaissance, with the object, no doubt, of procuring food for their litter. They may be seen upon the summit of an eminence, examining the douars, and taking note of the smoke that issues from them, and of the position of the flocks. After uttering some horrible roars, an invaluable warning to the surrounding population, they again disappear. It is during this absence that the hunters cautiously make their way to the cubs and carry them off, taking care to gag them closely, for their cries would not fail to bring back the old ones, who would never forgive the outrage. After an exploit of this nature the entire neighbourhood is obliged to be doubly vigilant. For seven or eight days the lions rush about in all directions, roaring fearfully. The lion under such circumstances is a truly terrible monster. At such a time the eye must not encounter the eye.