African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

One day towards the end of the year 1878, my friend Mr. Alfred Cross left our main camp on the Umfuli river in Mashunaland, and taking an empty waggon with him, went off to buy corn at some native villages about twenty miles distant. That same afternoon he outspanned early near a small stream running into the Umfuli, as a heavy thunderstorm was threatening. A kraal was made for the oxen, behind which the Kafir boys arranged a shelter for themselves of boughs and dry grass as a protection from the anticipated downpour of rain. They also collected a lot of dry wood in order to be able to keep up a good fire. The waggon-driver, a native of the Cape Colony, made his bed under the waggon, to the front wheel of which Mr. Cross's horse was fastened. As one of the hind oxen kept breaking out of the kraal, it was tied up by itself to the hind yoke close in front of the waggon. The trek chain, with the other yokes attached to it, was then stretched straight out along the ground in front of the waggon. Soon after dark the thunderstorm, which had been gathering all the afternoon, burst forth with terrific violence. The rain fell in sheets, soon extinguishing the fires that had been lighted by the Kafirs, and the blinding flashes of lightning which continually lit up both heaven and earth with blue-white light were quickly succeeded by crashing peals of thunder.

The storm had lasted some time and the rain had almost ceased, when the ox which was tied up all alone to the after yoke of the waggon began to jump backwards and forwards over the disselboom—the waggon pole.

Cross, who was then lying down inside the waggon, raised himself to a sitting position, and whilst calling to the ox to quiet it, crawled forward, and raising the fore sheet, looked out. Just then a vivid flash of lightning lit up the inky blackness of the night just for one brief moment. But the brilliant light revealed to my friend every detail of the surrounding landscape, and showed him with startling distinctness the form of a big male lion lying flat on the ground not ten yards in front of the frightened ox, which it would probably already have seized, had it not been for Cross's loud shouting. The lion had been no doubt creeping silently towards its would-be prey, which had already become aware of its proximity, when my friend's voice caused it to halt and lie flat on the ground watching. By this time Cross's dog, a well-bred pointer, which had been lying on the driver's blankets under the waggon, had become aware that something was wrong—though the lion was no doubt making its approach against the wind—and was standing just behind the ox, growling.

Directly the position of the lion was revealed to him by the lightning, Cross seized his rifle, and calling to the waggon-driver to jump up and hold his horse, took aim in the direction of the crouching brute, waiting for another flash of lightning. This was not long delayed, and showed the lion still lying flat on the ground close in front of the waggon. Cross fired at once. Encouraged by the report of the rifle, poor Ponto rushed boldly forward, past the terrified ox, into the black night, barking loudly. A yelp of fright or pain suddenly succeeded the bold barking of the dog, and poor Ponto's voice was stilled for ever. He had rushed right into the lion's jaws, and had been instantly killed and carried off. Fires were then made up again, but the lion, apparently satisfied with a somewhat light repast, did not give any further trouble. On the following morning Cross could find no part of Ponto but the head. All the rest of him had apparently been eaten.

I remember even to-day, and with perfect distinctness, though I have not seen it for many years, a certain picture in Gordon Cumming's well-known book on African hunting, and the fearful fascination it always had for me when I was a small boy. That picture represented a great gaunt lion in the act of seizing one of the hunter's Hottentot servants—poor Hendrik—as he lay asleep by the camp fire; but it left to the imagination all the horror and agony of mind suffered by the poor wretch, when so rudely awakened at dead of night and swiftly dragged away into the darkness to a cruel death, in spite of the gallant attempts of his comrades to save him.

During the sixty odd years that have elapsed since this tragedy was enacted on the banks of the Limpopo, many a similar incident has taken place. Some of these occurrences have come within the knowledge of, and been described by, European travellers and hunters, yet these have been but isolated cases, and can only represent a very small percentage of the number of natives that have been dragged away from their camp fires, or even killed in their huts, by hungry lions within recent times.

As a rule, I think, a lion seizes a sleeping man by the head, and in that case, unless it is a very old and weakly animal, death must be usually instantaneous, as its great fang teeth will be driven into the brain through the thickest negro skull.

I have known of two instances of men having been seized at night by the shoulder. This, I think, is likely to happen to a sleeping man lying on his side with one shoulder raised, especially if his recumbent form should happen to be covered with a blanket, in which case the most prominent part of him would very likely be mistaken by a lion for his head.

In the early 'nineties of the last century, two troopers of the British South Africa Company's Police started one afternoon from the neighbourhood of Lo Magondi's kraal to ride into Salisbury, the capital of Mashunaland, a distance of about seventy miles. They rode until dark, and then off-saddling their horses, tied them to a tree, and after having had something to eat and cooked a pot of tea, lay down by the side of the camp fire they had kindled, intending to sleep until the moon rose and then continue their journey by its light. About midnight, however, and when it was very dark, for the moon had not yet risen, a prowling lion came up to their lonely bivouac, and, disregarding their horses, seized one of them by the shoulder and at once dragged him away into the darkness. His companion, awakened by his cries, quickly realised what had happened, and snatching up his rifle, ran to his friend's assistance and fired two or three shots into the air in quick succession. This so startled the lion that it dropped its prospective supper and made off. The wounded man, it was found, had received a severe bite in the shoulder when the lion first seized him, but fortunately had not suffered any further injuries, and was able to proceed with his friend to Salisbury as soon as the moon had risen. He had to be sent to the Hospital on his arrival there, as, although his hurts were not very serious, any wound indicted by the teeth of a lion is, as a rule, very difficult to heal unless carefully attended to at once and cauterised with a strong lotion of carbolic acid. Dr. Livingstone has described how he suffered for years from the bite of a lion; and I have myself seen wounds from the teeth of one of these animals in a horse's neck, which had never been properly attended to, still suppurating thirteen months after they had been inflicted; whilst, on the other hand, I have seen wounds from the bite of a lion, which were cauterised at once, heal up very quickly and never reopen.

Of all the lion stories that I have ever heard or read, I think none equals in dramatic interest the thrilling narrative of Mr. J. H. Patterson's[4] experiences with two man-eaters during the construction of the Uganda Railway in 1898. This very remarkable story, a brief account of which I first read some years ago with the most absorbing interest in the Field newspaper, has now, I am glad to say, been incorporated in the record of his experiences in East Africa which Colonel Patterson has recently published under the title of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo. Mr. Patterson (as he then was) at last succeeded in ridding the country of both of these dread beasts, but not before they had killed and eaten twenty-eight Indian coolies employed upon the construction of the Uganda Railway, and caused such a panic through the country-side, that at one time it looked as if the building of the railway would have to be abandoned altogether for the time being.