LION OF SENEGAL.
Another Lion-slayer is one of David’s “braves”—Benaiah—“He went down also and slew a Lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow.”[11] Now this slight mention of the forest-king is a perfect picture in a few short words. In that land of milk and honey there was snow at certain seasons, and then that huge, bearded Cat was fain to hide himself in some cleft of the rock. If, however, the term “pit” means one in which the Lion has fallen, being entrapped, the short snatch of history loses none of its interest. The calm courage of this man made him to be “more honourable than the thirty mighty men,” in the list of David’s captains.
After the deportation of the ten tribes to Babylon, the number of Lions and other beasts of prey must have increased to a fearful extent in Palestine, for we find the men sent by the King of Assyria to re-people the deserted cities, complaining to their monarch of the ravages of these beasts which, as they put it, had been sent “because they knew not the manner of the God of the land.”
As to the favourite haunts of the Lion in the various countries where it exists, “that Lions exist in the desert,” says M. Carette, “is a myth popularised by the dreams of artists and poets, and has no foundation but in their imagination. This animal does not quit the mountains where it finds shelter, food, and drink. When the traveller questions the natives concerning these wild beasts, which Europeans suppose to be their companions in the desert, they reply, with imperturbable sangfroid, ‘Have you, then, Lions in your country which can drink air and eat leaves? We fear only the viper, and, in humid spots, the innumerable swarms of mosquitos which abound there.’”[12] But the sacred writer makes him come up from the “swellings of Jordan;” and with Homer he is the Mountain Lion: the “artists and poets” of M. Carette are moderns, who know but little of the subject; not ancients who were familiar with the beast.
LION OF BARBARY.
When an animal has a wide geographical distribution it is almost always found that it exhibits, in different parts of its range, more or less well-marked varieties, distinguished from one another by evident though sometimes unimportant characters. This is the case with the Lion, of which five varieties are usually distinguished, three being found in Africa, and two in Asia. These varieties, or races, are as follows:—
1. The Lion of Barbary.—The fur is of a deep yellowish-brown colour, and the mane is more developed than in any other variety, forming long tresses which cover the neck and shoulders, and are continued along the belly and the inside of the legs. This variety extends over the whole of Africa north of the Sahara.
2. The Lion of Senegal is found in the western part of Africa, south of the Sahara. Its fur is of a lighter colour than that of the Barbary Lion, and the mane is less thick, and hardly at all developed over the breast and insides of the legs.