These incursions of lions are periodical, and happen shortly after the first rains have covered the sterile ground on the coast with a beautiful crop of young grass. The antelopes come from the interior to feed on this sweet grass, and the lions follow their steps to feed on them.
Numbers of slaves used to be eaten by the lions in the orchilla-picking time. I knew one man who lost twelve in a short time at the Bay of Bomfim, and another seventeen at Lucira, and they had to give up collecting till the lions retired. If a lion once tastes negro flesh, he prefers it to beef, and has been known to kill the black herdsman and not touch a head of his cattle.
The Portuguese in Angola are not valiant at lion-hunting. The proprietor of the large sugar-cane plantation at Equimina used to recount how he went out one night to shoot a lion that had devoured several of his slaves, and used to visit the cattle enclosure nightly. He saw the lion approach him as he knelt on one knee near the high stump of a tree against which he leant his gun to steady his aim, and waited till he thought it was sufficiently near, when he fired both barrels between its eyes. A tremendous roar instantly followed his shot, and he ran for his life and bounded over the high thorny fence forming the enclosure. Nothing more being heard of the lion, he went with his blacks in search with torches, and found it dead, and so firmly clasping the stump of the tree with its paws and claws, that they were with difficulty detached from it.
He used to say that the thought that he might have been in the lion’s dying embrace instead of the stump, cured him of going out lion-hunting; and he never could make out how he had managed to clear the high fence at one jump, as he did on that night when terror lent wings to his feet.
CHAPTER VIII.
COUNTRY BETWEEN BENGUELLA AND MOSSAMEDES—MOSSAMEDES—CURIOUS DEPOSITS OF WATER—HYENAS—WELWITSCHIA MIRABILIS—MIRAGE.
The country between Benguella and Mossamedes abounds with large animals: elands, spring-bok, and other antelopes, zebras, wild buffaloes, &c. The natives affirm positively that the eland and other antelopes in their wild state capture and eat small birds.
It would be curious to ascertain if this strange habit or taste in a herbivorous animal is true, or has been observed in South Africa, where these animals are still more abundant.
I was once fortunate enough to see, from a low rocky ridge, a vast herd of spring-bok running at full speed across a plain near Mossamedes, and it was really a fine sight. This very beautiful animal has a quantity of long, snow-white hair completely hidden in a fold of the skin along its spine;—when running, its pace seems to be a succession of high leaps, in which this long white hair is alternately exposed and hidden at each jump. The effect of these flashes of pure white in the sun was most striking and beautiful, as the thousands of spring-bok sped rapidly across the plain at our feet, and gradually vanished in the distance. Although I had been prepared to see large herds of antelopes at Mossamedes, from the accounts of the Portuguese there, and from what I had read in books of travel in Southern Africa, I could not help being astonished at the sight, and feeling how impossible it was to realize, except from actual observation, the appearance of thousands of these lovely animals assembled together and scudding like a cloud across the face of the great bare plain.
The large tree euphorbias, so common near the coast at Ambriz and Loanda, become scarcer in the country to the south till we get to the desert hills and cliffs about Elephant Bay, and beyond to Mossamedes, where they completely disappear.
Perfectly flat-topped hills are a striking feature of this part of the coast, and are appropriately termed “mezas” or “tables” by the Portuguese. The coast, more particularly from the River San Nicolau, is deeply cut by ravines with almost perpendicular sides, and leading no great distance inland, evidently worn by the action of the water through the basalt and other friable rock. It makes travelling on foot hard work, as the usual road is near the sea and some of the walls of cliff are difficult and dangerous to ascend and descend.