picture of the behavior of both males and females at the time spoken
of. “It was in the stags’ rutting season, and Mohammed, a great hunter
of every kind of wild animal, perched himself at sunset in the boughs
of an oak tree to watch for a doe that had been seen wandering in the
vicinity, accompanied by several stags. The tree he climbed stood in
the middle of a large clearing, and near it was a path which led into
the neighboring forest. Towards midnight he saw a lioness enter this
open space, followed by a red lion, with a full-grown mane, who carried
the carcass of an ox. Soon after they were followed by another lion,
a lioness, and three cubs. The first lioness strolled from the path,
and came and laid herself down at the foot of the oak, while the lion
remained in the path, and seemed to be listening to some sound as yet
inaudible to the hunter.
“Mohammed soon heard a distant roaring in the forest, and the lioness
immediately answered it. Then the lion commenced to roar with a voice
so loud that the frightened man let his gun fall, and held fast to the
branch with both hands lest he should tumble from the tree.
“As the voice of the animal heard in the distance gradually
approached, the lioness welcomed him with renewed roarings, and the
lion, restless, went and came from the path to her, as if he wished her
to keep silence, and then, from the lioness to the path again, as if to
say, ‘Let the vagabond come; he will meet his match.’
“In about an hour, a large lion as black as a wild boar stepped out of
the forest and stood on the edge of the clearing in the full moonlight.
The lioness raised herself up to go to him, but the lion anticipating
her intention, rushed before her, and marched straight towards his
adversary. With measured steps and slow they approached to within a
dozen paces of each other; their great heads high in air, their tails
slowly sweeping down the grass that grew around them. They crouched to
the earth; a moment’s pause, and then they bounded with a roar high in
air, and rolled upon the ground, locked in their last embrace.
“Their struggle was long and fearful to the involuntary witness of this
midnight duel. The bones of the combatants cracked under their powerful
jaws, their talons strewed the grass with entrails, and painted it red
with blood, and their roarings, now guttural, now sharp and loud, told
of their rage and agony.
“At the beginning of the conflict the lioness crouched low, with her
eyes fixed on the gladiators, and all the while the battle raged,
manifested, by the slow, cat-like motion of her tail, the pleasure she
felt at the spectacle. When the scene closed, and all was still and
quiet in the moonlit glade, she cautiously approached the spot, and
snuffling at the bodies of her two lovers, walked leisurely away,
without deigning to notice the gross but appropriate epithet Mohammed
sent after her, instead of a bullet, as she went off.”
This otherwise excellent sketch loses something of its _vraisemblance_
from carelessness and inaccuracy in execution, and also from an
unfortunate style, which gives to most French narratives of this kind,
however true, the air of romances. Gérard knew that a doe is never
accompanied for any length of time by several stags, and there can be
no excuse for making a lion range the woods with an ox in his mouth.
When cubs are about two months old, they begin to forage in the
vicinity of their lair. This hunting, however, is more than half play,
for they are sprightly little creatures whose gambols and infantile
familiarities soon become distasteful to the grave and morose nature
of their father. The lion then takes up his quarters out of their
reach, but at the same time near enough to come to the assistance
of his family if aid should be needed. Two cubs as a rule are born
together, and one of these is generally a male. If the birth be single,
this is said to be invariably the case, so that the fact that males
considerably outnumber females is accounted for, and with it both the
wantonness of the latter, and those trials to which their consorts are
exposed. The race maintains its place by the sacrifice of its weaker
numbers. The strongest whelps and most powerful lions live, mate, and
kill or dispossess their rivals. Sexual selection on the lionesses’
part aids this process, and the result is, as everywhere and always,
that the fittest survive, and transmit their traits with a result
which is in every way beneficial to the species.
A great many young ones die while cutting their teeth. If this has been
accomplished safely, however, their education begins immediately after
that event.
A lion does not reach maturity until the eighth year, and he lives to
be about forty. At the end of his second year, however, the animal has
attained considerable size, strength, and agility, while his predatory
tendencies are then more freely indulged than at any subsequent
period of life. Up to the time at which mutual indifference separates
parents and offspring, the latter have been directed and assisted in
all things. Game has been found for them, and methods of capture and
killing have been illustrated. Thus far experience has brought with it
only assurances of success. They have been incited to take life for
practice, encouraged to act when there was no necessity for acting,
guarded from the consequences of temerity and incapacity. Therefore,
when separation takes place and they go forth alone, it is with an
undue self-confidence which often entails disaster. Young lions are
notoriously daring, destructive, and dangerous.
There are many dogmatic and differing decisions with regard to the
manner in which lions seize, kill, and eat their victims, as also in
respect to the degree in which their natural ferocity may be tempered
by fear or discretion. There must be, of course, a family likeness
among them in these particulars, but no such uniformity as has been
imagined can be found in their behavior when a wide enough view is
taken.
The fanciful opinion that a lion disdains to eat game that he has not
stricken himself, vanishes at once. Derogatory to his dignity as it
may be, the fact is that he will consume anything he finds dead, that
his taste is of the most indiscriminate character, and that he is
very frequently a foul feeder. “Many instances,” says Andersson (“The
Lion and the Elephant”), “have come to my knowledge which show that
when half famished he will not only greedily devour the leavings of
other beasts, but even condescend to carrion.” In another work (“Lake
N’gami”) the same author states that lions eat carrion without being
“half famished.” Sir Samuel Baker (“Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia”)
saw several that he knew were not pressed by hunger feeding on the
putrid body of a buffalo shot by himself, and Gérard (“Journal des
Chasseurs”) very nearly lost his life by a lioness who had come to
feed upon the carcass of a horse in the last stages of decomposition.
Lions appropriate any meat they may happen to find. “I have frequently
discovered them feasting on quadrupeds that had fallen before my
rifle,” remarks Colonel Cumming (“A Hunter’s Life in Africa”). Major
Leveson (“Sport in Many Lands”), W. H. Drummond (“The Large Game and
Natural History of Southern Africa”), Colonel Delgorgue, (“Voyage dans
l’Afrique Australe”), Sir W. C. Harris, (“Wild Sports in Southern
Africa”), and H. C. Selous (“A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa”), all
confirm the assertion that “lions are by no means too proud to eat game
killed by others.” This charge must be admitted, and it is entirely
conformable with another; namely, that his majesty is one of the
laziest beings alive. “Laziness, assurance, and boldness,” says Gérard,
are his most conspicuous traits of character, and Moffat (“Missionary
Labors and Scenes in South Africa”) adds gluttony to the list. He was
“taken aback,” he assures us, by the astonishing feats in the way of
gormandizing that this animal performed. It should be remembered,
however, that an average beast of prey passes a life divided into
alternate periods of famine and repletion, and that it is, both from
habit and conformation, capable of cramming itself in a manner which
almost exceeds belief.
There is hardly need to cite authorities upon the act of seizing prey,
because lions do so in all those ways that different observers have
severally decided to be peculiar to this beast; and it is the same
with the various methods by which they kill. The whole subject of
attack, whether upon man or beast, is wrapped in a mass of positive
contradictions.
In India troops of lions have been known to divide themselves into
sections that relieved one another at short intervals in the actual
pursuit of game. As a rule, however, species belonging to this group
do not, and can not, really run down prey. Their peculiar structure,
adapted to bounding, climbing, and brief rushes, does not admit of
a long gallop. Their limbs are too massive and short, and are not
sufficiently detached from the body to give them free play. Lions have
been called “the most cat-like of all cats,” and for the most part
these animals ambush or stalk those creatures which they kill.
When a lion impelled by hunger leaves his lair, he sometimes has
a definite object in view, but more frequently goes forth to take
advantage of anything that may turn up. If the former is the case, his
course is directed, as that of a man would be in like circumstances, by
a previous acquaintance with the haunts and habits of the game he is
after. He does not ambush a disused path to a dried-up spring, or look
for a quagga in a buffalo wallow, or attempt to stalk black antelopes
in the same way that he would approach cattle belonging to some
Hottentot kraal.
In Africa, which is his true home, a lion “is never known to chase
prey.” Having sighted it, ascertained its species, surveyed the ground,
found out the direction of the wind,--preliminaries essential to any
subsequent attempts to get near,--he begins to practise a set of
manœuvres adapted to present conditions, and these he has learned in
the literal meaning of that term. Faculty is transmitted. Knowledge is
always acquired.
Having closed successfully and seized his prey, it is destroyed in
a variety of ways. As a matter of fact immediate death does not
invariably come to the relief of its sufferings, even in the case of
those smaller creatures on which the lion preys. He does not wait, as
Buffon supposed, until insensibility ensues before tearing them to
pieces. Nor is it true, as Dr. Livingstone imagined, that Providence
assuages the agonies of all animals thus caught, by bestowing upon
the _Felidæ_ a propensity to shake their victims, and so produce a
state of insensibility. How can a lion shake an ox or an eland, a
horse, giraffe, buffalo, or young rhinoceros? Andersson tells us that
he mistook the groans of a zebra carried past his camp by night for
those of a human being, and went to the rescue. More than this, if the
brute itself has any feeling about this matter,--and there is every
reason to believe that it has,--all manifestations of pain heighten the
pleasurable excitement it experiences in putting an animal to death.
Cruelty is organized in its brain, and to a beast of prey, pity is
about as possible as poetic inspiration. Love of bloodshed, exultation
in carnage, immitigable ferocity, are ingrained in them all; and so
far as a lion appreciates expressions of mental anguish and physical
torture, they thrill his fierce spirit with a savage joy.
Gordon Cumming relates a story which shows what a human being may
experience when in the clutches of a lion. His party had encamped,
and “the Hottentots,” as he tells, “made their fire about fifty yards
away, they, according to their custom, being satisfied with the shelter
of a large bush. The evening passed away cheerfully. Soon after dark
we heard elephants breaking trees in the forest across the river, and
once or twice I strode away into the darkness, some distance from the
fireside, to stand and listen to them. I little, at that time, dreamed
of the imminent peril to which I was exposing my life, nor thought
that a blood-thirsty, man-eating lion was crouching near, and watching
his opportunity to spring into the kraal and consign one of us to a
horrible death. About three hours after the sun went down I called
to my men to come and take their coffee and supper, which was ready
for them at my fire. After supper three of them returned before their
comrades to their own fireside, and lay down; these were John Stofolus,
Hendric, and Ruyter. In a few moments an ox came out by the gate of
the kraal and walked round the back of it. Hendric and Ruyter lay on
one side of the fire, under a blanket, and Stofolus lay on the other.
At this moment I was sitting, taking some barley broth; our fire was
very small, and the night was pitch dark and windy.
“Suddenly the appalling and murderous voice of an angry and
blood-thirsty lion burst upon my ear within a few yards of us, followed
by the shrieking of the Hottentots. Again and again the murderous roar
of attack was repeated. We heard John and Ruyter scream, ‘The lion! the
lion!’ Still, for a few moments, we thought he was but chasing one of
the dogs round the kraal. But the next instant Stofolus rushed into the
midst of us almost speechless with fear and horror, his eyes bursting
from their sockets, and shrieked out, ‘The lion! the lion! he has got
Hendric; he dragged him away from the fire beside me. I struck him with
burning brands upon the head, but he would not let go his hold. Hendric
is dead! O God! Hendric is dead! Let us take fire and seek him!’ The
rest of my people rushed about, yelling as if they were mad. I was
angry with them for their folly, and told them if they did not stand
still and be quiet, the lions would have another of us, for very likely
there was a troop of them. Then I ordered the dogs, which were nearly
all tied, to be loosed, and the fire increased as far as it could be. I
shouted Hendric’s name, but all was still. I told my men that Hendric
was dead, and that a regiment of soldiers could not help him then.
Hunting my dogs forward, I had everything brought within the kraal,
when we lighted our fire, and closed the entrance as well as we could.
“My terrified people sat around the fire with guns in their hands,
fancying at every moment that the lion would return and spring into
the midst of us. When the dogs were first let go, the stupid brutes,
as dogs often prove to be when most needed, instead of going at the
lion, rushed fiercely at one another and fought desperately for some
minutes. After this they got his wind, and going at him, disclosed his
position. They kept up a continual barking until day dawned, the lion
occasionally springing at them and driving them in upon the kraal. This
horrible monster lay all night within forty yards of us, consuming
the wretched man he had chosen for his prey. He had dragged him into
a little hollow at the back of the thick bush beside which the fire
was kindled, and there he remained until day broke, careless of our
proximity.
“It appeared that when the unfortunate Hendric rose to drive in the
ox, the lion watched him to his fireside, and he had scarcely lain
down before the brute sprang upon him and Ruyter (for both were under
one blanket) with his appalling roar; and, roaring as he lay, grappled
him with his fearful claws, and kept biting the poor man’s chest and
shoulder, all the while feeling for his neck, having got hold of which,
he dragged him away backward round the brush into the dense shade.
“As the lion lay upon him he faintly cried, ‘Help me! Help me! Oh God!
men, help me!’”
Here was no instinctive fear of man, no sign of the timidity so much
talked about, no falling off of the victim into the dreamy languor
Dr. Livingstone expatiates upon. His pain was sooner over than that of
some we know of; death came when the neck was crushed, but what had he
suffered previously?
There is an alleged trait of character which should be alluded to on
account of the propensity displayed even by those who really know this
animal to make a composite being of him--part lion and part gentleman.
Gérard is one of them. He was to some extent, no doubt, deceived by
common report, and likewise misled by his knowledge of those domestic
virtues that really belong to the animal. At all events he constructed
a lion that bears a curious resemblance to a _raffiné_ of the famous
old duelling days in France without the _seigneur’s_ levity or his
lewdness. When his family, whom he has up to this time fed himself, are
able to join in the chase, the lion finds the game, strikes it down,
and then, with that refined self-abnegation which comports so well with
his natural character, he retires to a little distance from the quarry
in order that _Madame_ may be first served. This and much more to the
same effect.
It happens, however, that one man, and only one to the writer’s
knowledge, the Hon. W. H. Drummond, chanced to see what Gérard has
depicted in colors furnished by his own fancy. His narrative of the
incident from first to last is much more in accordance with the style
of manners taught in the struggle for existence than the former one.
One day while watching the motions of some antelopes from the summit
of a grassy and rock-strewn ridge, Drummond suddenly became aware that
he was not the only hunter interested in the game of that vicinity.
A lioness with her whelps crouched among the herbage at a little
distance, and so intent were they upon the movements of their expected
prey, that he was entirely unnoticed. While awaiting events a band of
quaggas passed close to some bushes at the foot of the slope, and then
a lion’s form was launched upon the leading stallion, and he fell dead
from a blow with the beast’s forearm.
Without any delay the lion proceeded to help himself, his family
drawing near, but waiting until his appetite had been stayed. “The
sultan of the desert” has a short temper when he is feeding, and on
many occasions has been known to eat his wife, either in the way of
reproof to her importunity at such times, or because he did not have
food enough. It would seem that this lioness suspected something of
the kind might occur, for she kept herself and the young ones in
the background until his highness had finished, which he, not being
particularly hungry, did very soon. When he had walked away and
stretched himself out, the rest pressed forward, and the mother treated
her offspring with scant curtesy. She pounced upon those parts she
preferred, and boxed the little ones, who were struggling for a bite,
out of the way whenever they incommoded her.
Thus far in the catalogue of leonine gifts and graces we have not
discovered any that are peculiarly their own; on the contrary, when
examined closely, those with which lions are accredited turn out to
be counterfeits. Gordon Cumming says of the lion, in company with
his mate and whelps, that, “at this time he knows no fear,” and in
defence of his family “he will face a thousand men.” This is a
rhetorical flourish, and yet now when it has become the fashion to
call the creature a poltroon, the statement as it stands is better
supported by proof than almost any other that has been made concerning
its character. If this animal is not brave, nobody is in a position to
call it cowardly. All the evidence tends the other way. Taken as it is,
looked upon as a brute to whom heroism, sentiment, and high resolve
must be as impossible as righteousness, the lion preserves the demeanor
of courage better than any other member of the _Felidæ_.
Moffat, Lichtenstein, Freeman, Rath, Galton, say with W. C. Kerr (“The
Far Interior”) that “when a lion is thoroughly hungry there is no limit
to his audacity and daring.” Every being must have _some_ incitement to
action, and those motives which are most powerful with lions appear to
be anger and appetite.
Postponing for the moment his relations with mankind, let us see what
kinds of game the lion is accustomed to prey upon. No coercion can be
exercised in this direction. Actual starvation might take away liberty
of choice, but, as a rule, it must be admitted that a selection of
this kind is significant of the opinion which an animal has of its
own powers, as it also is of its boldness. The giraffe, which lions
occasionally kill, is entirely defenceless: so with elands and all
antelopes. This is likewise the case with those domestic animals which
are devoured. It has been said that the elephant is sometimes attacked,
but this is one of those stories which only display the ignorance of
those who propagate them. The black and white rhinoceros is never
assailed, although Delgorgue actually refers to the latter, a beast
second only to the elephant in size and most formidably armed, as if it
were commonly destroyed. “_Maintes fois trouvai-je des rhinocéros de la
plus haute taille, que ni leur poids, ni leur force, ni leur fureur,
n’avaient pu préserver de la mort._” If anything were needed to set
off this pleasant statement, it could be found in Delgorgue’s roundly
declared opinion that lions are all “abject cowards.”
But in Africa the lion constantly preys upon the buffalo, and without
going so far as Andersson in saying that he principally lives on this
species, the fact that it is continually killed is beyond question.
Many famous hunters suppose that an African buffalo is the most
dangerous creature to be found on the “Dark Continent.” It is of
immense size and strength, active, brave, and fierce.
No account is known to the writer of a single lion that was seen to
slay a full-grown buffalo, and several authorities doubt whether this
be possible. The latter have, however, often been shot while bearing
the scars of combats with one or more lions. According to the evidence
as it exists, the case stands in this way. One lion may attack a
buffalo, it is impossible to say whether he will or not; two of them
certainly do so, and the battles that ensue are of the most desperate
description. It is known, also, that these conflicts do not always end
in favor of the assailants.
“The lion kills only for food,” says Major Leveson, meaning that in
mature life he does not commit useless murders, or show the same love
of blood for its own sake as some other members of his family. Without
doubt, this animal is not sanguinary when compared with a panther or
puma, but it is quite as likely that he is restrained from unnecessary
carnage by economic views, as by any sentiment of generosity or mercy.
A lion when surprised does not usually dash away incontinently; if his
retreat is not interfered with, and he has learned that firearms are
more effective than his own weapons of offence, he falls back slowly.
When so placed that they cannot escape, some lions die like curs, but
the majority of accounts represent them as perishing gallantly. Such is
the case also when for any reason the creature has resolved to fight.
Then it seems to make no difference to him how many foes he encounters.
Numerous narratives very similar in detail have been written by
different observers of such scenes. No other wild beast confronts a
body of armed men after his manner. That last parade in face of a horde
of savages beneath whose assagais he is about to die, is so striking
that false inferences from the sight can scarcely be avoided. It is
not the “deliberate valor” of Milton we see, nor even heroic despair;
it is nothing perhaps with which humanity in its nobler emotions
can sympathize; but it looks as if it were, and men have yielded
to their feelings and believed that it was. “Life,” says Professor
Robinson, “has but one end for a lion--enjoyment. He is incapable of
forgetting that he is only a huge cat, or flying in the face of nature
by pretending to be anything else.... He makes no claim to invincible
courage; on the contrary, he prefers, as a rule, to enjoy life rather
than to die heroically. But when death is inevitable, he is always
heroic, or even when danger presses him too closely ... a lion in the
shadow of death remains a lion still.”