MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH LIONS
For many thousands of years lions have appeared in literature and art
as savage and ferocious animals. For about that length of time man has
been attacking lions and when the lions fought back man has set down
this judgment against them. At the same time, with the criticism of
his savagery, man has put in all his records testimony to the courage,
strength, and fighting qualities of what has been called through the
ages the King of Beasts.
The lion's savagery is very much the same as man's--that is, he kills
other animals for food and not having developed any specialized
industries like the packers, each lion kills for himself. His day's
work, instead of getting money to buy food, consists chiefly in getting
food, and he goes about it something in this manner. About dusk he
comes out from his resting place, yawns, stretches, and looks about
for something to eat. In East Africa his favourite diet is zebra, but
he likes any of the game animals, and he prefers the larger animals
to the smaller antelope because the larger ones are easier to catch.
His intention is to get his food the easiest and quickest way. He goes
out on the plains and by scent, sight, and hearing locates a herd of
zebra, for example. He then gets down wind from what he hopes will be
his next meal and stalks to within rushing distance. He can outrun
a zebra for a short distance, and when within striking distance he
makes a sudden dash. I think that the zebra is thrown by the lion's
spring and then killed by a bite in the back of the neck, but this
impression is from deduction and not from observation. I have seen a
lot of animals that lions had killed but I never saw a lion in the act
of killing. In fact, the methods which lions use in hunting are not
known in detail from observation, for not enough instances have ever
been witnessed and recorded to make the basis for any general statement
which could be considered scientifically accurate.
When he has captured his animal the lion will eat and then lie near it
perhaps all night, perhaps all the next day, if he is not disturbed,
eating as he desires. If he leaves his kill the jackals, hyenas, and
vultures will clean it up immediately, and as the lion kills for food
and not for sport or the pleasure of killing, he is content with one
kill as long as the meat lasts.
The lion group, as I have designed it for the Roosevelt African Hall,
will show in the foreground a trickling stream where the lions have
come at dawn to drink, while, at a distance on the plains, the vultures
and jackals are approaching the kill the lions have just left.
Lion hunters are not agreed about how much lions depend on sight, on
sound, and on smell. It is not altogether easy to tell how soon they
know the presence of man or of other animals, for they do not always
show what they know. For instance, I once had the startling experience
of getting within three feet of a lioness before she moved. She, of
course, knew I was there long before I got that close, and yet until I
almost stepped on her she made no sign. There is, however, no question
but that the lion has a sharp, far sight in the daytime, and from the
size of the pupil and his nocturnal habits of hunting I think he has
unusually keen sight at night. I have never seen any indication that a
lion has the keen smell of a dog or any animal that hunts by scent, nor
have I ever seen anything to make me believe that he has any abnormal
sense of hearing.
While many things about lions' habits are controversial, I think that
practically everyone who has had experience with them will agree that
they are not savage in the sense of killing for the mere sake of
killing. There are a few isolated cases which seem to conflict with
this statement, but the great mass of testimony confirms it. There was
a seeming exception to this rule which happened to an English traveller
and his wife in Somaliland. They were intent on getting a lion by
"baiting"--that is, they killed an animal and left it as bait for the
lions while they hid in a thorn _boma_ which they built near by. There
was only a small hole in the _boma_ through which to watch and shoot.
They stationed a black boy at this hole to watch while they slept. They
awoke to find that a lion had stuck his head into the hole and killed
the black boy--bitten his head clear off, so the local story goes.
However, no one knows why the lion killed the boy in this case for, of
the three possible witnesses, two were asleep and the third dead.
It is possible, of course, that the lion deliberately attacked the
_boma_ without provocation, but it seems unlikely, for lions are driven
to these extremities chiefly by hunger; and in this case the lion could
have satisfied his hunger by the bait that had been laid out for him.
The usual man-eater is an old lion, who in the season of scattered
game finds it impossible with his failing strength and speed to catch
animals for food. To keep from starving he attacks the native flocks
and herds, or the natives themselves. The most famous man-eaters, the
lions of Tsavo, which spread such terror as almost to stop construction
on a part of the Uganda railway, were, indeed, an exception to the
rule. Colonel Patterson, whose classic account of them is one of the
great animal stories of the world, accounted for these young, vigorous
animals becoming man-eaters because some of the coolie workers who
died were put in the bush unburied and the lions had acquired a taste
for human flesh by eating these bodies. After this taste was acquired
these lions hunted men just as the ordinary lion hunted zebras. They
made a regular business of it. It was their daily fare, and they took
a terrible toll before they were finally killed. But these lions were
killing for food just as if they were killing zebras.
Even when forced to fight, the lion is not vindictive. If an elephant
gets a man he is likely to trample on his victim and mutilate him
even after he is dead. I have never known of lions doing this. On the
other hand, as soon as their adversary is dead, often as soon as he is
quiet, they will let him alone. The game animals on which the lions
are accustomed to feed corroborate this characteristic. They know
that the lion kills for food at night and they likewise know that he
kills only for food, so in the daytime they do not bother about lions
particularly. I have seen lions trot through a herd of game within
easy striking distance of many of the animals without causing any
disturbance.
So far as I know, except for the comparatively few man-eaters, lions
are never the aggressors. More than that, they prefer to get out of the
way of man rather than fight him, and they will put up with a good deal
of disturbance and inconvenience and even pain before they will fight.
But once decided to fight they will fight with an amazing courage even
if there are plenty of opportunities to escape.
I had an experience which showed both these aspects of a lion's nature.
Frederick M. Stephenson, John T. McCutcheon, the cartoonist, Mrs.
Akeley, and I were hunting lions. I had a moving-picture camera and the
others were armed with guns. One day the natives rounded up a lioness
in a patch of uncommonly tall, thick grass. The beaters hesitated to go
in after her, so I took a gun and McCutcheon and I joined the porters,
leaving Stephenson and Mrs. Akeley outside. The grass was so thick
that we had to take our rifles in both hands and push the grass down
in front of us and then walk on it. We had made some progress in this
manner when suddenly, as we were pushing down the grass, it was thrown
violently back, jerking our rifles up and almost throwing us over. It
was the lioness. We had pressed the grass down right on her back. Yet
despite this intrusion she made off and did not attack us.
As she went out of the grass into the open, Stephenson shot at her and
missed. Some of the boys rode after her on horseback and rounded her
up in another patch of cover. By this time, however, her patience had
run out. She could have run some more had she wanted to, but she didn't
want to. When Stephenson approached the cover with his gun boys she
took the initiative and charged. His first shot stopped her a second,
but she came on again. His second shot killed her.
My first black-maned lion showed the same characteristics. He, too,
preferred peace to war, although I originally disturbed him with his
kill, but finally, when he declared war, although he was badly wounded,
he preferred to charge two white men and thirty natives rather than try
to escape.
I had gone up on the Mau Plateau to shoot _topi_. The plateau is about
8,000 feet above sea level there and I didn't expect to find any lions.
One day I discovered two _topi_ in a little valley between two gentle
rises. I was crawling up to the top of one of the rises overlooking
the valley to get a shot when I noticed some movement in the grass
on the slope opposite. I thought it was another _topi_. As I raised
myself a little to shoot I noticed that the original pair that I was
hunting were gazing with fixed attention toward some movement on the
far hillside. I looked again and saw an old lion get up and walk to
the top of the hill, turn round facing me, and lie down to watch the
valley from his side as I was watching it from mine. We were about 400
yards from each other. In the valley between were the _topi_, and also
I noticed a dead zebra. Evidently I had disturbed him at his previous
night's kill. My pony and gun boys were some distance behind and I had
only one cartridge left in my double-barrelled cordite rifle. Under
these conditions I reluctantly decided to go back for proper equipment.
My reluctance was not merely at losing a lion but at losing that
particular lion, for he had a great black mane and no one had killed a
black-maned lion in that part of Africa.
By the time I got back with my cartridges and the gun boys, he had
disappeared. We began beating about to see if we could find him or
his trail, but without success. We did, however, find the remains of
several kills, which led me to think that this single old fellow had
found the neighbourhood good hunting, and was making a more or less
prolonged stay. Under the circumstances I felt it wise to go to camp
and get my companion, Shaw Kennedy, and our thirty beaters to hunt him
out the next day.
Before going, however, I planned a campaign. Not far from where the
lion had been a ravine began, which ran some distance and ended in a
thick piece of forest. The sides of the ravine were covered with clumps
of thick bush. Into one of these I felt sure the lion had retreated.
Unless closely pushed he would not go into the forest. My plan was to
enter the ravine the next day at the forest end so that he could not
escape to safety among the trees, and drive up the ravine to force him
out into the open.
When we got to the edge of the forest the next morning Kennedy and I
drew lots for the choice of position. He won and chose the upper end
of the ravine toward which we were to drive, while I was to follow up
behind the beaters to get him if he broke back. Of course we were not
sure that our quarry was even in the neighbourhood, but I had great
hope of everything except getting this first black-maned specimen
myself, for Kennedy's position made it almost certain that he would get
the animal if any one did. The first patch of bush that the beaters
tackled was about 100 yards long and 50 yards wide. As they set up
their usual racket before entering I thought I heard a lion's grunt,
but as nothing more developed I concluded it had been merely some of
the boys. This patch of bush was a mass of nettles, briers, and thorns,
and made exceedingly disagreeable going. The porters were making very
slow progress, so I went in to encourage them. However, by the time we
were halfway through I was so scratched and torn that I quit and went
out toward the bottom of the ravine. The briers had somewhat cooled
my faith in the theory that the lion was in the ravine. I sat down
on an ant-hill where I had a fair view. Kennedy fired and I looked
quickly. The lion which had come out in front of Kennedy had turned
and was running down across the ravine and up the other side. I had a
good shot at him and the bullet knocked him over. However, he got up
and went into a clump of bush. This clump just filled a kind of pot
hole about fifty yards in diameter. Kennedy watched one side and I the
other so that we had every avenue of escape covered. The beaters then
began throwing stones and sticks into the bush. The lion made no move.
He might be dead or he might be lying close. We wanted to know, but no
one wanted to know sufficiently to crawl in and see. Finally Dudo, my
gun-bearer, suggested that we light a fire and make some firebrands.
We busied ourselves with this. In the meanwhile, there was no response
from the lion. When the firebrands were ready Dudo asked leave to
throw the first one for he maintained that he knew where the lion was.
Dudo threw, and as his firebrand disappeared in the brush there was
a roar and a shaking of the bushes that told exactly where the beast
was hidden. A shower of firebrands followed but with no effect. Then
the boys threw rocks. But nothing resulted. By this time Kennedy had
joined the crowd. All the beaters and both of us were grouped on one
side of the pot hole. Dudo now took a small-bore rifle and fired, not
in an effort to kill the lion but to move him. It succeeded, and he
moved, not away from us but toward us. The way of retreat was open but
he didn't take it. Dudo fired again, and again the bushes moved toward
us. Finally the old fellow was so close to the edge of the brush that
while we couldn't see him he undoubtedly could see us. He stood looking
out on thirty black men and two white men in front of a great fire--a
crowd of his enemies. The path was not blocked in any other direction.
He looked us over carefully for fully five minutes and then of his own
volition, with a great roar, he charged out of the brush and up from
the pot hole. Halfway up the slope the fatal bullet hit him. He was
killed charging his enemies and without thought of retreat--the first
black-maned lion ever shot in British East Africa.
He was old and had been through various vicissitudes. At one time he
had had a leg broken but it had healed perfectly. The tip of his tail
was gone also. But for all that he was a great specimen.
These two instances are fair examples of the usual method of hunting
lions in British East Africa. Riding after them on horseback might be
considered a different method than the beating, but as a matter of
fact, the two merge into each other. When beating, the lion hunter
usually rides until he actually reaches the lion's cover, and if he
runs on to a lion in the open he rides after it until the superior
speed of the horse over any fair distance forces the lion to stop and
lie down at bay. And, likewise, if one is riding after lions and the
lion gets into cover, the game is up unless there are beaters to get
him out.
Paul Rainey introduced an added element to the horseback method of lion
hunting when he imported his lion hounds. I call them lion hounds
for they chased lions--that is the only thing the pack had in common.
It included curs, collies, airedales, bear hounds from the South, and
almost every other kind of canine. When Rainey and the hounds appeared,
the Governor of East Africa remarked that the lions were going to get
some good dog meat. But within a couple of years "hounding lions"
was stopped because the lions fell too easy a prey to the hounds and
hunters. When Rainey took his hounds there no one was certain how
the lions would act, and it was a sporting thing to try. But it soon
developed--and Rainey, who is a thorough sportsman, was one of the
first to see it--that the hounds kept the lion so busy once he was
brought to bay that the hunter could approach and take as many shots as
necessary with almost perfect immunity from a charge. It is not quite
accurate to say that Rainey introduced the practice of hunting lions
with dogs. Foa, the French traveller, speaks of the practice ten years
before Rainey went to Africa. He even tried to organize a pack. His
pack failed. But the principle of having dogs keep the lions so busy
that they would not charge, he described completely.
Besides these daylight methods of hunting it was a common practice to
hunt lions at night by baiting--that is, to kill an animal and hide
near it in the hope that a lion would come to eat, and then shoot him.
There is not much danger in this, for the thorn _bomas_, or hiding
places, are a good protection, and the lion would not be likely to
attack any one unless he was shot at or molested. There is, of course,
the instance of the black man killed in the _boma_ in Somaliland, but
that event is the exception.
As a method of killing lions, night baiting is not very sportsmanlike,
but as a method of photographing it is not only legitimate but it has
produced by far the best lion pictures ever made in Africa--especially
those of Schilling and A. Radclyffe Dugmore. Rainey and Buffalo Jones
got some remarkable moving pictures of hunting lions with dogs, but
the total number of all pictures of live lions ever taken is still in
keeping with the small amount of detailed and accurate knowledge of
lions' habits which we have. To my mind the finest lion-hunting picture
ever taken was brought back by Lady Grace McKenzie. Her operator got
a moving picture of a wounded lion charging. It shows the lion's rush
from the bush at Lady McKenzie and her companion--a white man. It shows
the man turn and run and the lion rush right by Lady McKenzie after
him. There the picture ends. On his recent trip Martin Johnson got a
motion picture of five lions crossing the plains, one of which was shot
by Mr. Johnson.
But neither beating, baiting, nor hounding is the really sportsmanlike
method of hunting lions--it is spearing, and spearing takes a black man.
One time in Uganda, after I had been under a considerable strain while
elephant hunting, I decided that I needed a rest and a change. I set
out for the Uasin Gishu Plateau where I got together one hundred Nandi
spearmen. We had no difficulty in getting volunteers, for they were
to be paid and fed for playing the game they loved. During the first
half day out from the government station, where we gathered our force
together, the alarm of lion was sounded. We were approaching a patch
of bush. The spearmen entered the bush from all sides. I placed my
motion-picture camera at a point of vantage. The idea was to drive the
lion out in front of the camera and have the spearmen at that point
spear him. Above the din of the spearmen in the bush I finally heard
the angry growl of a leopard. There was great excitement in the bush
for a few seconds. Then three of the boys came out of the bush. The
middle boy of the three was being carried and his scalp was hanging
down over his face. Behind this trio came a group carrying the dead
leopard. Later, when his skin was stretched, it showed sixty spear
holes.
I promptly took the wounded boy under the shade of a mimosa tree,
shaved him, and sewed his scalp back into place and cared for his other
wounds. He showed little interest in the proceedings beyond asking a
question of the other black boys about what I was doing. Seemingly the
whole operation was over before he recovered from the shock of his
mauling. The next morning when I sent him home he was much troubled.
He said that he had not committed any offence and he did not see why
he had to be sent home. His wounds did not seem to trouble him or to
dampen the ardour of the others in the slightest.
We went on for a week. One day, just as we were making camp near a
waterfall, an alarm was sounded near the forest. One of the boys had
seen a lion. His whereabouts was discovered after much beating back and
forth. I got my camera ready as before at the place the boys thought
the fight would take place, but the lion did not do his part. He broke
in a different direction and another bunch of spearmen got him two
hundred yards away. It was so exasperating to have something prevent
this most exciting of all movie photography from succeeding that I
almost failed to appreciate the courage and skill of the spearmen.
A few days later, soon after our start in the morning, Mrs. Akeley and
I were riding ahead of the procession when we met several lions coming
out of the grass and bush near a small stream. The spearmen immediately
surrounded the bush into which the lions plunged. The lions tried to
escape, but in whatever direction any lion tried to go a spearman
bobbed up out of the grass in front of him. That is a simple statement,
but to jump up in front of a lion or three lions with nothing but a
spear and shield as protection is a thing not to be taken lightly. As
the lions sought one escape after another, and found each closed, they
fought it out. There was about ten minutes of pandemonium. Then we took
stock. Three dead lions gathered together in a pile; pretty authentic
reports that two others escaped--and not a picture.
At the next spearing, however, I did get two pictures. We were riding
along early in the morning through a rough bush country. All at once
I heard a lion grunt. The gun boy held up his hand as a signal to
stop. The camera was rushed forward to the bank of a little ravine,
but before it was assembled ready for the operation a lioness came
up within ten feet of the camera, turned to the left, and then ran
back by the same route. The boys waved to me to come down twenty-five
yards. There, from a little knoll, we got the first movie record of
lion spearing. A young, full-grown lion was at bay in tall grass at
the bottom of the ravine. The camera trained on the place caught the
first spear thrown. The first one was followed by a shower of spears,
and a few seconds later the boys rushed in and got their spears. It was
all over quicker than it takes to tell it. In the film not only do the
falling spears show but also the movement of the lion in the grass, but
the cover and a dark day made any part of the film impossible to use as
a still picture. Hardly had I finished turning the handle on this scene
when I was called off twenty-five yards to another lion at bay. He was
held for the camera and a similar record of this one was made. In the
meantime, a lone spearman making desperate effort to get into the show
stumbled on an old lioness. They fought it out, man and beast together.
When we discovered him he was on his back protecting himself with his
shield, a single bite in his leg and the lioness dying beside him. He
had killed a lioness practically alone, which entitled him to wear a
lion's skin headdress.
On this trip of twenty days we had three occasions in which the
spearmen rounded up five lions in a bunch and each time they got three
of the five. Altogether, we got ten lions and five leopards. One boy
was mauled by a leopard, another was bitten on the leg by the lion.
These were the only injuries to the men. Not a shot was fired during
the twenty days. Our last encounter involved five old lions, three of
which were speared, and three cubs captured alive--but no pictures. It
happened like this:
Three lions going up a slope, signal given, pandemonium turned loose.
Movements of men looked as if the lions had gone over the hill beyond
to a dry stream bed. With the heavy camera I ran down the foot of the
hill when I was called back and had to run back to the top of the hill
where the lion was at bay. He might have been held indefinitely there
in the open sunlight--a wonderful chance for a picture. But in spite of
long teaching, of threats, promises, and urging, the boys' excitement
overcame them. The spears began to fly before the camera was ready. As
I was adjusting the camera the lion was speared in full view in the
open sunlight. A camera man never had such a chance before, but it was
lost because the camera was slow. After the planning, the care, the
work--the luck to have it go like this was too much, and my instinct
was to grab my gun and shoot the man who threw the first spear. I think
it was the most heartbreaking failure I ever had. I intended never to
have another, and from that minute I began working on a camera that
takes no time to adjust. I got it finally, but that one moment of
poignant disappointment cost me many months of toil.
Here is the way I see this lion spearing. A naked savage gets iron ore,
then he gets fire from two sticks, and then charcoal. Then he makes a
retort of clay in which he smelts the iron ore. With a hunk of granite
for an anvil and another for a hammer he rough forges the spear. With
soft iron hammers forged in a similar way he finishes the spear which
is finally sharpened on native stones. With this equipment he starts
out to kill the lion that has been preying on his flocks or herds. He
takes a great pride in the achievement, for he will make from the mane
a headdress which his exploit entitles him to wear. Of course this does
not happen just this way now, but the Nandi's spearmen speared lions
with the arms they made before the white men came. It is a fair contest
between man and beast. And the courage and skill of these men are
wonderful.
Paul Rainey had a ranch on the west shore of Lake Naivasha. One morning
his boys reported to him that a lion had invaded the _kraal_ the night
before. He set out on horseback with a few of his dogs and two Masai
herd boys with their spears. The dogs soon took up the spoor of the
lion and brought him to bay under an acacia tree on the grassy plain.
The sun had just risen above the hills on the other side of the lake.
The long shadows of the table-top acacias lay across the plain, the
lion underneath in full sunlight. Rainey jumped off his horse, threw
the reins over a bush, and grabbed his rifle from its boot. He then saw
the two Masai boys run on toward the lion. As they approached the lion,
one threw his spear and missed. They were between him and the lion, and
he could not shoot. The boys stood stock still till the lion was in
mid-air in his final spring when the one with the spear stepped to one
side and thrust his spear into the lion's neck killing him instantly.
He fell at their feet. As the boy withdrew the spear and carefully
wiped the blood off on the corner of his breechcloth he remarked to
Rainey:
"You see, Master, it is work for a child."
That is how the Masai figured it. But I never have felt so. The first
wild lion I ever saw scared me almost to death, and a good many of them
have scared me since. The first lions that I saw were in Somaliland.
An oryx hunt had just come to a close. We were about to mount our
ponies when one of the black boys pointed. There were three lions
walking quietly across a patch of hard, dry sand. They were perhaps
a hundred yards away. They looked as big as oxen to me. I had never
before seen a lion outside of a cage. We turned our ponies over to
the Somali gun boys who galloped after them to round them up. My next
view of the lions was when the beaters had gone in to drive them out
of a bit of jungle. A roar came from immediately in front of me and I
saw a lioness in mid-air as high as my head, springing, thank heaven,
diagonally away from me. But she saw me as she sprang and landed facing
me. As I fired, a lion jumped over her back, which so disconcerted me
that my shot only wounded her. This lion disconcerted her, too, for
she followed him. Two more shots at her and she disappeared in another
clump of cover with the lions. In our efforts to drive them out of this
cover we finally set it on fire. The two lions rushed out and escaped
us. The lioness, more seriously wounded than I thought, never came. I
had failed to get a lion, but I felt satisfied none the less, because
the lions had likewise failed to get me. That one moment in that day,
when I saw the lioness in the air, I'll never forget, for I realized
that death was but an instant away.
From that time until now I have seen a great many lions, shot some, and
handled nearly fifty specimens, so that I have made a fairly extended
study of the measurements and anatomy of the king of beasts. I have
tried also to study his living characteristics and habits, but that is
much more difficult. After all, perhaps the most impressive thing about
a lion is his foreleg. The more you know of elephants the more you
regard the elephant's trunk. The more you know of lions, the more you
respect the lion's foreleg and the great padded and clawed weapon at
the end of it. It is perhaps the best token of the animal's strength.
It is probably two or three times as powerful in proportion to weight
as the arm of a man. He can kill a man with one blow of his paw. His
other weapon, his jaw, is strong enough to break a zebra's neck at one
bite. These are a rather rough measure of an animal's strength, but
they give some idea of it.
There is a record which says that a lion has dragged an African buffalo
fifty yards. A buffalo weighs at least three times as much as a lion. I
have never had evidence of this much "pulling power" but I have known
of many instances of lions dragging zebras that far, and the zebras
weigh nearly twice as much as the lions do.
Another test of a lion's strength is his ability to stand punishment.
I have seen a lion charge with seven lead bullets from an old .577
Express rifle through his shoulder, and only finally succumb to the
eighth bullet in his head.
L. J. Tarlton, one of the best shots that has ever hunted game in
Africa, told me once, when we were both recuperating from sickness,
that he was going to quit shooting lions. What had brought him to this
conclusion was an experience which he had just had with a charging
lioness. He had hit her three times in the chest. She finally died
touching his feet. When he examined her, all three bullets were within
a three-inch radius and every one should have been fatal. Yet she had
almost reached him despite his fast and accurate shooting.
These instances are exceptions, but often in African hunting the
exceptions are about as common as the rule and one exception may be
enough to end the story.
My nearest approach to being mauled by a lion came from this same
capacity of a lion to carry lead, and from my own carelessness. I had
seen a lion standing some little distance away from me clearly in
view, and had shot him. The bullet knocked him down and, as I thought,
hurt him badly. After a while he got up and came my way. When about
forty yards away he gave me another clear shot. So without reloading
the first barrel of my double-barrelled rifle I fired the second. I
hit him again, but not with the desired result. He charged. There I
was with an empty gun to meet the charge of a wounded lion, and with
no one else, not even a gun boy, near. All the rules of lion hunting
say that you must meet a charge without moving. But all the promptings
of instinct were to move, and I moved. I slipped to one side behind
a clump of high grass as fast as I could, endeavouring meanwhile to
reload. A few seconds after I had left the spot where I should have
stood the lion's spring landed him directly on it. He had had to come
through a little depression, and this and the long grass had obscured
his sight so he had not seen me move. Not landing on me as he expected
so disconcerted him that, even though he saw me, he dived into the
thick bushes right ahead of him instead of coming at me. There he
stopped, threatening for a time to repeat his charge. Finally, changing
his mind, he headed deeper into the brush and, as it was too thick
to follow him, I let him go. In the mix-up my _syce_ had become so
completely frightened that he had jumped into the river, so he was
quite unable to tell whether the lion had got my pony or the pony had
run away. After a certain amount of fruitless searching I walked the
ten miles back to camp.
The usual movement of a lion is a walk or a kind of fox trot. At speed
he will still continue to trot except at maximum effort, when he
gallops.
Lions do not usually have any habitation; but occasionally they live
in caves. When I say live, I do not mean that they inhabit them
continuously. They roam about, following the movements of the game. If
they happen to be working in a country where there is a cave, they will
use it while in the neighbourhood. But a given band of lions usually
stays in one place only a short time. The phrase "band of lions" is
perhaps not very accurate. Lions go in all kinds of combinations of
numbers. There is a cave on the MacMillan ranch near Nairobi from which
sixteen lions have been seen to come. Personally I have never seen more
than eight lions together, but I have seen almost all combinations of
numbers, ages, and sexes below that number. Lions are more often in
twos, threes, or fours than in other combinations.
But although I know that lions are accustomed to roam after game, one
of the most interesting lion encounters I ever had came from acting on
exactly the opposite theory.
There is a place where a little stream flows into the Theba River,
where, in 1906, I was looking for buffalo and heard the snarling of two
lions. We stopped the buffalo hunt momentarily to locate the lions.
We started at the river bank to drive up the small stream toward the
higher land and the open. The beaters began their work with their
usual noises, which I checked as soon as possible for fear that the
lions would go out too far ahead of us to get a shot. I instructed
the beaters to go up the little stream with the cover along its banks
throwing stones in ahead of them. But my precautions were too late.
They had hardly started to work when I noticed on the hills a lion and
a lioness--one going to the left and the other to the right. They were
in the open. The lion disappeared over the crest of the first hill. I
had a theory that he would lie down on the top of that crest and watch
us. I accordingly left part of the men in sight while I, with a few
others, approached the hill under cover. I finally succeeded in getting
to a point behind a pile of rocks. Motioning the men to stay quiet and
keep back, I carefully poked my head up and saw the old fellow as he
lay looking toward me about seventy-five yards away. I drew back, and
then to my disgust one of my companions rose up in full view of the
lion, who made off unscathed by the hurried shots I fired at him. This
lion stayed constantly in my mind.
Three years later I was camped on the Tana River with Mrs. Akeley,
John McCutcheon, and Fred Stephenson. When we decided to march from
the Tana to the Theba I told the crowd that I was going by the spot
where I had lost the big lion three years before. I had a "hunch" that
he would still be there--or perhaps be revisiting the spot as I was.
Anyway, the feeling was strong enough to make me go. Stephenson went
off on an independent hunt. The others with the _safari_ came with me.
We loitered along photographing rhinoceroses until we came in sight
of my spot--the place where the little stream emptied into the Theba.
I noticed that Stephenson was coming toward us and about to cross the
little stream. I remarked, "Fred is going to drive our lions out and
never know it." I then felt a little foolish but nevertheless watched
him go through my pet lion bed. Only a few minutes later McCutcheon
pointed toward the upper end of the stream and said:
"What is that?"
"My pair of lions," I answered.
They were going up the hill exactly as they had three years before
except this time they did not separate. We watched them to the top of
the hill. We started out to head them off. As we reached the top of the
hill to one side of where they had gone, we heard a lion grunt behind
us. There, about a hundred and twenty-five yards away, were the lion
and lioness apparently in a very nasty humour. We all crouched down,
and as we did so the lions rose up to see us. I said to Mrs. Akeley:
"Shoot whenever you are ready."
I was pretty nervous, for a couple of mad lions in the grass make a
very bad outlook.
She fired and missed clean. The lioness began lashing her flanks. Mrs.
Akeley fired again. The lion fell dead with a bullet through his brain.
McCutcheon and I urged each other to shoot the lioness, who, in the
meantime, bolted and got away. I have handled nearly fifty lions, but
this one that Mrs. Akeley killed was the largest of all and he had a
good yellow mane. I can't prove that it was the same pair I had seen
three years before. What we know of lions is against it, but I still
like to think it was. This was Mrs. Akeley's first lion--a splendid
trophy, cleanly killed.