"Oh, the lioness. Why, there she was and there I was. She with a very ugly look, and growling, and I with my rifle put out of action. I felt it was time to do something, so I backed out of the bush singing a hymn in a loud voice."
THE SPORT OF KINGS.
The days have gone by when the Paramount Chiefs of the Barotse embarked annually upon a large-scale Lechwe drive. I believe the last big hunt took place in 1899. I, at any rate, have heard of no such happening since.
It is just as well that these drives have come to an end. The African natives' idea of sport does not altogether tally with that of the white man; no sportsman likes to see animals slaughtered en masse.
In those days the Lechwe antelope were strictly preserved for the pleasure of the Paramount Chief and his entourage. No native was permitted to disturb them in their natural haunts—the wide, open plains—and no man could kill one under pain of heavy penalty. The only exception to this rule was when a few head strayed into the vicinity of Lealni, the principal native village of the Barotse valley. Then the people were allowed to hunt them with dogs, but not to shoot them.
The time chosen for these drives was after the rains had ceased to fall, but while the Zambesi had still more water to carry off than its banks could contain. The overflow was such that for a space the Barotse Valley became a vast lake, varying in depth from a few inches to a dozen feet.
The same may be said with equal truth of the Luena river, an important tributary which, flowing from the East, made its junction with the Zambesi not far from Lealni. It was in the Luena basin that the drives took place.
For two months before the time of hunting preparations for the drive began. Those long, heavy casting assegais, peculiar, I believe, to that part of Africa, were cleaned and sharpened. Narrow hunting canoes were collected, repaired and caulked. Four foot long pikes, sharpened at one end—which was hardened by burning—with a stout blade fixed in the other, were prepared in great numbers by the Batotela, a slave tribe cunning in the manufacture of iron. The blades of these pikes were short and flat and had the rounded point of an oyster-knife.