NOCTURNAL ATTACK BY LION.
In districts where they are much hunted, and where they have consequently become familiar with the sound of fire-arms, as well as in parts where there is hardly any game of the kind for which they care, lions are much more dangerous than in places where their food is plentiful, and where human footsteps rarely penetrate. Most notorious for their audacity are those which haunt the banks of the Maressana and Setlagole rivers, and those that are found in the Matabele country. Except perhaps the fox, no animal surpasses them in the craftiness with which they set themselves to secure their prey. Sometimes a group of them institutes a sort of battue. A few of them creep up and exhibit themselves to the victims they want to catch, thus scaring them back into the very clutch of the main body that lurks behind ready to receive them. Instinct prompts them to adopt this line of proceeding with animals whose speed is too rapid for them to overtake in open pursuit, and with such as are tall and can overlook their movements in the long grass. Horses, zebras, and giraffes, and any animals with solid hoofs form the favourite prey of all lions.
On the day after my arrival at Panda ma Tenka, Blockley invited Anderson and me to sup with him on buffalo-meat and pickled cod, prepared in London by Morton and Co. He told me that Mr. Westbeech had heard of my arrival from Mr. Mackenzie nine months ago, and that he had reported it to King Sepopo, who had willingly granted me permission to pay him a visit, adding that he was pleased to understand that I did not intend injuring his elephants. He said, moreover, that I should be in every way as welcome as Monari—that being the name by which Dr. Livingstone was known in the Marutse district. Blockley had himself spent several months at the royal residence, and had also, at the king’s invitation, once gone out to the relief of Westbeech, having taken a waggon with the greatest difficulty as far as the Barotse valley. I subsequently travelled with him, and much enjoyed his genial company.
During our stay here, I fell in with a number of Bakuenas, under the conduct of one of their princes, on their way to take Sepopo an old mare as a present from Sechele. They recognized me immediately, but I had not retained any recollection of them.
It happened that Blockley was on the point of starting to visit Sepopo, and I proposed to accompany him. I made arrangements for Theunissen to stay behind in charge of the waggon, gave stringent directions to Meriko to look after the bullocks, and decided to take Pit with me. At this time bullocks were fetching a good price; and I disposed of three of mine, because I found it requisite to get some ivory to replace my stock of ready money, that was all but exhausted. I likewise sold one of my breech-loaders to Mr. Blockley, and spent the proceeds in replenishing our supply of tea, sugar, coffee, and other articles of regular consumption. Mr. Westbeech had commenced doing business with Sepopo four years back, and it was through his influence with the king that the Marutse domains had been thrown open to other merchants. He had the advantage of being able to speak with perfect fluency the three native languages—the Sesuto, the Setebele, and the Sechuana.
We started on the 3rd of August. Blockley took a whole waggonful of wares, which he hoped the king would purchase. The vehicle would be left about nine miles from the mouth of the Chobe, and the goods carried by bearers to the Zambesi, along which they would be conveyed in boats to the new residence of the Marutse-Mabunda sovereign.
For the first few miles our road lay along some interesting hill country, intersected by a number of spruits flowing east and north-east into the Panda ma Tenka; the higher parts were rocky, and generally covered with trees. Overhanging one of the streams was an immense baobab, close to which was said to be the resort of a lion, a dark-maned brute, which had sorely harassed the neighbourhood by its depredations.
In the evening we halted facing a wooded ridge, which would have to be crossed at night, on account of the tsetse-fly with which it was infested. We here met a half-caste, named “Africa,” who had been hunting ostriches twenty miles further on, and who was on his way to Panda ma Tenka, for the purpose of making some purchases of Blockley. Blockley accordingly had to return with him, but he gave his people instructions to proceed on their way for about thirty miles more, and then to wait for him to overtake them again. Africa had seen some of Sepopo’s people on the Chobe, and they had informed him that the king had been very much annoyed by the bad behaviour in his house of the Bakuena prince who had been sent with Sechele’s present.
Several times we heard the roaring of a lion, and so near to us did it seem at the time of our halting, that we not only made up unusually large fires, but took care to keep our guns ready for immediate service. The night was dark, and we could scarcely see ten yards in front of us, but shortly after two o’clock we ventured to start, and got safely through the wood without any inconvenience from the tsetse-fly, finding ourselves at dawn on the plain called the Gashuma Flat. It contained a good many pools, most of them moderately deep, frequented by water-birds. Altogether I have now crossed this plain three times, and never without noticing an abundance of game, but this time I saw zebras, Zulu-hartebeests, and harrisbocks, and, what I had never seen before, an orbeki gazelle. Continuing our journey, we came after a while to another plain, of which, like the last, the soil is so rich as to be quite impassable in the rainy season. Our next halt was near a wood, at a rain-pool called Saddler’s Pan.
After altering our course from north to north-west we came in the course of the following day to a dried up rain-pool, with a number of fan-palms adorning its banks. Westbeech subsequently told me that many most elegant trees of this kind had been felled by hunters and traders on the Gashuma Flat out of pure wantonness.