A LION DRIVE. WITH A RHINO IN RANGE SOME ONE SHOUTS "SIMBA" AND I GET MY
FIRST GLIMPSE OF A WILD LION. THREE SHOTS AND OUT
Like every one who goes to Africa with a gun and a return ticket, I had
two absorbing ambitions. One was to kill a lion and the other to live to
tell about it. In my estimation all the other animals compared to a lion
as latitude eighty-seven and a half compares to the north pole. I wanted
to climb out of the Tartarin of Tarascon class of near lion hunters into
the ranks of those who are entitled to remark, "Once, when I was in
Africa shooting lions," etc. A dead lion is bogey in the big game
sport--the score that every hunter dreams of achieving--and I was
extremely eager to make the dream a reality.
When speaking with English sportsmen in London my first question was,
"Did you get any lions?" If they had, they at once rose in my
estimation; if not, no matter how many elephants or rhinos or buffaloes
they may have shot, they still remained in the amateur class.
On the steamer going down to Mombasa the hunting talk was four-fifths
lion and one-fifth about other game. The cripple who had been badly
mauled by a lion was a person of much distinction, even more so than the
ivory hunter who had killed three hundred elephants.
[Photograph: By courtesy of W.D. Boyce. Mr. Stephenson's Lion]
[Photograph: A Post Mortem Inquiry]
On the railway to Nairobi every eye was on the lookout for lions and
every one gazed with intense interest at the station of Tsavo and
remembered the famous pair of man-eaters that had terrorized that place
some years before.
In Nairobi the men who had killed lions, and those who had been mauled
by them (and there are many of the latter), were objects of vast
concern, and the little cemetery with its many headstones marked "Killed
by lion" added still greater fire to my interest.
[Drawing: _The Jolly Little Cemetery_]
Consequently, when we marched out of Nairobi on the evening of September
twenty-third, with tents and guns and a hundred and twenty men, the
dominating thought was of lions. If ever any one had greater hope and
less expectation of killing a lion I was the one.
We had planned a short trip of from three to five weeks northeast of
Nairobi in what is called the Tana River country. While there are some
lions in that section, as there are in most parts of British East
Africa, it is not considered a good lion country. Buffaloes, rhinos,
hippos, giraffes, and many varieties of smaller game are abundant,
largely because the Tana River is in a bad fever belt and hunting
parties generally prefer to go elsewhere. This preliminary trip was
intended to perfect our shooting, so that later, when in real lion
country, we might be better equipped to take on the king of beasts with
some promise of hitting him.
[Drawing: _Peering for Lions_]
The tree-tops and corrugated iron roofs of Nairobi had hardly dropped
behind a long, sun-soaked hump of the Athi Plains when I began to peel
my eyes inquiringly for lions. All the lion stories that I had heard for
the preceding few months paraded back and forth in my memory, and if
ever a horizon was thoroughly scanned for lion, that horizon just out of
Nairobi was the one. Hartebeests in droves loped awkwardly away from the
trail and then turned and looked with wondering interest at us. Zebras,
too fat to run, trotted off, and also turned to observe the invaders.
Gazelles did the same, and away off in the distance a few wildebeests
went galloping slowly to a safe distance. They were probably safe at any
distance had they only known it, for up to the hour when I cantered
forth from Nairobi in quest of lions and rhinos I had not shot at
anything for three years, nor hit anything for ten.
Night came on--the black, sudden night of Africa--and we went into camp
four miles from Nairobi without ever having heard the welcome roar of a
lion. It was a distinct disappointment. I remembered the story about the
lions that stampeded the zebras through the peaceful gardens of Nairobi
only a few nights before--also the report that some man-eaters had been
recently partaking of nourishment along the very road upon which we were
now camping. I also remembered hearing that lions had been seen prowling
around the edge of the town and that the Athi Plains are a time-honored
habitat of the lion family. On the other hand, I thought of Mr.
Roosevelt, who had recently been reducing the supply. I also remembered
how many hunters had spent years in Africa without ever seeing a lion,
and how Doctor Rainsford had made two different hunting trips to Africa,
always looking for lions, but without success.
During our first three days of marching, we looked industriously for
lions. On broad, grassy plain, in low scrub, on the slopes of low
hills--everywhere we looked for them. If a flock of vultures circled
above a distant spot we went over at once in the hope of surprising a
lion at his kill. Every reed bed was promptly investigated, every dry
nullah was explored. McMillan's farm, which is a farm only in name, was
scoured without ever a sign or a hint that a lion lurked thereabouts.
Mr. McMillan has four lions in a cage, but they snarled so savagely that
we hastened away to look for lions elsewhere. The second day we crossed
the Nairobi River, the third day we crossed the Induruga River, and the
fourth day we camped down on the Athi River. Here we struck a clue. Two
English settlers came over and told us that lions had been heard the
night before near their ranch house, on the slopes of Donyo Sabuk, a
high solitary round top mountain rising from the Athi Plains, and we
determined to organize our first lion hunt. It was here that Mr. Lucas
was killed by a lion a short time before.
A lion hunt, or a lion drive, is quite a ceremony. You take thirty or
forty natives, go to the place where the lion was heard, and then beat
every bit of cover in the hope of scaring out the beasts. Lions are fond
of lying up during the day in dry reed beds, and when you go out looking
for them, you are most likely to find them in such places.
[Photograph: Mr. Stephenson's Splendid Buffalo]
[Photograph: "Lion Camp"]
[Photograph: The Lion and Lioness in Camp]
We started, three of us, with forty porters, at about daybreak. At seven
o'clock we had climbed up the side of the mountain to the spot where the
lions were supposed to be lurking--a long, reed-filled cleft in the side
of the slope. The porters were sent up to one end of the reed bed,
twenty on each side, while we went below to where the lion would
probably be driven out by their shouting and noise. The porters
bombarded the reeds with stones while we waited with rifles ready for
the angry creature to dash out in our vicinity. It was an interesting
wait, with plenty of food for thought. I wondered why the Englishmen had
not come out to get the lions themselves, and then remembered that one
of them had been mauled by a lion and had henceforth remained neutral in
all lion fights. I wondered many other things which I have now
forgotten. I was quite busy wondering for some time as I waited. In the
meantime the lions failed to appear.
Bushbuck, waterbuck, and lots of other herbivora appeared, but no
carnivora. We raked the reed bed fore and aft, and combed the long grass
in every direction. A young rhino was startled in his morning nap, ran
around excitedly for a while, and then trotted off. Birds of many
varieties fluttered up and wondered what the racket was about. At ten
o'clock we decided that the lions had failed to do their part of the
program, and that no further developments were to be expected. So we
marched back homeward, got mixed up with another rhino, and finally
gained camp, seven miles away, just as our hunger had reached an
advanced stage.
The next day we marched to the Thika Thika River, then to Punda Milia,
and then to Fort Hall. Some one claimed to have heard a lion out from
Fort Hall early in the morning, but I more than half suspect it was one
of our porters who reverberates when he sleeps. From Fort Hall we
crossed the Tana and made three marches down the river. Rhinos were
everywhere jumping out from behind bushes when least expected and in
many ways behaving in a most diverting way. For a time we forgot lions
while dodging rhinos. There were dozens of them in the thick, low scrub,
with now and then a bunch of eland, or a herd of waterbuck, or a few
hundred of the ubiquitous kongoni.
We camped in a beautiful spot down on the Tana. The country looked like
a park, with graceful trees scattered about on the rolling lawn-like
hills. On all sides was game in great profusion. Hippos played about in
the river, baboons scampered about on the edge of the water, monkeys
chattered in the trees, and it seemed as though nearly all of the eight
hundred varieties of East African birds gave us a morning serenade. A
five-minutes' walk from camp would show you a rhino, while from the top
of any knoll one could look across a vast sweep of hills upon which
almost countless numbers of zebras, kongoni, and other animals might be
seen.
But never a lion. It certainly looked discouraging.
As a form of pleasant excitement, we began to photograph rhinos, Mr.
Akeley took out his moving-picture machine, advanced it cautiously to
within a few yards of the unsuspecting rhino, and then we tried to
provoke a charge. We took a dozen or more rhinos in this way, often
approaching to within a few yards, and if there is any more exciting
diversion I don't know what it is. I've looped the loop and there is no
comparison. It is more like being ambushed by Filipino insurgents--that
is, it's the same kind of excitement, with more danger.
One day it was necessary to shoot a big bull rhino. He staggered and
fell, but at once got up and trotted over a hill. Having wounded him, it
was then necessary for me to follow him, which I did for three blazing
hours. From nine o'clock till twelve I followed, with the sun beating
down on the dry, grass-covered hills as though it meant to burn up
everything beneath it. If any one had asked me, "Is it hot enough for
you?" I should have answered "Yes" without a moment's hesitation. The
horizon shimmered in waves of heat. From the top of one hill I could see
my rhino half a mile away on the slope of another. When I reached the
slope he was a mile farther on. I began to think he was a mirage. For a
wounded animal, with two five-hundred-grain shells in his shoulder, he
was the most astonishing example of vitality I have ever seen. He would
have been safe against a Gatling gun. There were more low trees a mile
farther on, and I plodded doggedly on in the hope of getting a little
relief from the sun. As I drew near I noticed a rhino standing under the
trees, but he was not the wounded one. I decided that the shade was
insufficient for both of us and moved swiftly on. Across the valley on
the slope of another blistered hill stood the one I was looking for. He
didn't seem to be in the chastened mood of one who is about to die. He
seemed vexed about something, probably the two cordite shells he was
carrying. I at last came up within a hundred yards of him. He had got my
wind and was facing me with tail nervously erect. The tail of a rhino is
an infallible barometer of his state of mind. With his short sight, I
knew that he could not see me at that distance, but I knew that he had
detected the direction in which the danger lay. By slowly moving ahead,
the distance was cut to about seventy yards, which was not too far away
in an open country with a wounded rhino in the foreground. I resolved to
shoot before he charged or before he ran away, and so I prepared to end
the long chase with an unerring shot.
Suddenly a sound struck my ear that acted upon me like an electric
shock:
"_Simba!_"
It was the one word that I had been hoping to hear ever since leaving
Nairobi, for the word means "lion." My Somali gunbearer was eagerly
pointing toward a lone tree that stood a hundred yards off to the left.
A huge, hulking animal was slowly moving away from it. It was my first
glimpse of a wild lion. He was half concealed in the tall, dry grass and
in a few seconds had entirely disappeared from view. We rushed after
him. The rhino was completely forgotten and was left to charge or run
away as he saw fit. When we reached the spot where the lion was last
seen there was no trace of him. He apparently was not "as brave as a
lion." We followed the course that he presumably took and presently
reached the crest of a ridge. Then the second gunbearer, a keen-eyed
Kikuyu, discovered the lion three hundred yards off to the right. After
reaching the top of the hill the animal had swung directly off at right
angles with the idea of reaching cover in a dry creek bed some distance
away. I started to shoot at three hundred yards, but before I could take
a careful aim the lion had disappeared in the grass. For an hour we
thrashed the high reeds in the dry creek bed with never a sign of the
king of beasts. He had apparently abdicated. He had vanished so
completely that I thought he had escaped toward some low hills a mile
farther on. The disappointment of seeing a lion and not getting it, or
at least shooting at it, was keen to a degree that actually hurt.
[Drawing: _Game Was Plenty for a Minute or Two_]
There was nothing left but to resume our chase after the wounded rhino.
It was like going back to work after a pleasant two weeks' vacation. We
presently found him on a far distant hill, and after an hour's tramp in
the sun we came up to him in the middle of the rolling prairie. There
was not a tree for a mile, nor a single avenue of escape in case he
charged. Horticulture had never interested me especially, but just at
this moment I think a tree, even a thorn tree, would have been a
pleasant subject for intimate study. However, to make a long story
longer, I shot him at a hundred yards and felt certain that both shells
struck. Yet he wheeled around and, stumbling occasionally, was off like
a railway train. Again we followed, two miles of desperate tramping in
that merciless sun, up hills and down hills, until finally we entirely
lost all trace of him. It was now two o'clock. I had eaten nothing since
five o'clock in the morning, my water bottle was so nearly empty that I
dared take only a swallow at a time, my knees were sore from climbing
hills and wading through the tall, dry prairie grass, and I decided to
give up this endless pursuit of a rhino who wouldn't die after being hit
with four cordite shells.
The dry creek bed lay in the course of our homeward march, and we
resolved to take a final look at it. There seemed no likelihood that the
lion was there, and I walked into the place with the supreme courage of
one who doesn't expect to find anything hostile. My head gunbearer and I
had crossed and were walking down in the grass at one side. My second
gunbearer was on the opposite side, and the stillness of death hung over
the burning plain.
There was not a sign of life in any direction. The second gunbearer was
instructed to set fire to the grass in the hope of awakening some
protest from the lion in case he was still in the vicinity. There was a
dry crackling of flames, and before we could count ten a deep growl came
from somewhere in front of me, evidently on one of the edges of the
creek bed. The second gunbearer was the first to locate him, and he
signaled for me to come over on his side of the creek. In a moment I had
dashed down and had climbed out on the other side and was eagerly gazing
at a clump of bushes indicated by the Kikuyu. At first I could
distinguish nothing, but soon I saw the tawny flanks and the lashing
tail of the lion. His head was hidden by the bushes. At that time we
were about a hundred yards from him and it was necessary to circle off
to a point where the rest of his body could be seen. A little side
ravine intervened, and I had to cross it and come directly down through
the clump of bushes. The grass was high, and it was not until I had come
within forty yards of the lion that I could get a clear view of him. He
was glaring at me, with tail waving angrily, and his mouth was opened in
a savage snarl. I could see that he didn't like me.
I raised the little .256 Mannlicher, aimed carefully at his open mouth
and fired. The lion turned a back somersault and a great thrill of
exultation suffused me. Already I saw the handsomely mounted lion-skin
rug ornamenting my den at home. We approached cautiously, always
remembering that the real danger of lion hunting comes after the lion
has been shot. We threw stones in the grass where he had lain, but no
answering growl was heard. I thought he was dead, but when we finally
reached the spot where he had been there was no sign of him. He had
vanished again. I searched the ravine and then crossed to the high grass
on the other side. Then we saw him for an instant, half-concealed, just
in front of us. His head was hanging, and he looked as though he had
been hard hit. Again he disappeared and we searched high and low for
him. For several hundred feet we beat the grass without result.
Then the grass was again fired and again the hoarse growl came in angry
protest. Walking slowly, with guns ready for instant use, we advanced
until we could see him under a tree seventy yards ahead on my side of
the ravine. He was growling angrily. This time I used the
double-barreled cordite rifle and the first shot struck him in the
forehead without knocking him down. He sprang up and the second shot
stretched him out. He was still alive when I came up to him, and a small
bullet was fired into the base of his brain to reduce the danger of a
final charge.
Old hunters always caution one about approaching a dying lion, for often
the beast musters up unexpected vitality, makes a final charge, kills
somebody, and then dies happy. So we waited a few feet away until the
last quiver of his sides had passed. One of the boys pulled his tail and
shook him, but there was no sign of life. He was extinct.
A new danger now threatened. The grass fire that the second gunbearer
had started was sweeping the prairie, fanned by a strong wind, and there
seemed to be not only the danger of abandoning the lion, but of being
forced to flee before the flames. So we fell to work beating out the
nearest fires, and trusted that a shifting of the wind would send the
course of the flames in another direction.
It was now four o'clock. We were nine miles from camp and food, and we
knew that at six o'clock darkness would suddenly descend, leaving us out
in a rhino-infested country, far from camp. The water was nearly gone
and the general outlook was far from pleasing.
The gunbearers skinned the lion. My first shot had struck one of his
back teeth, breaking it squarely off, and then passed through the fleshy
part of the neck. It was a wound that would startle, but not kill. The
second shot had hit him between the eyes, but had glanced off the skull,
merely ripping open the skin on the forehead for five inches. The third
shell had killed him, except for the convulsive heaving that was finally
stilled by the small bullet in the base of the brain.
[Drawing: _As I Planned to Look in the Photograph of "My First
Lion"_]
The skinning was interesting. All the fat in certain parts of the body
was saved, for East Indians bid high for it and use it as a lubricant
for rheumatic pains. The two shoulder blades are always saved and are
considered a valuable trophy. They are little bones three inches long,
unattached and floating, and have long since ceased to perform any
function in the working of the body. The broken tooth was found and
saved, and, of course, a photograph was taken. My gunbearer took the
picture, and when it was developed there was only a part of the lion and
part of the lion slayer visible. It was a good picture of the tree,
however.
[Drawing: _As I Looked--From Photograph by Gunbearer_]
At four-thirty the homeward march was begun. At five-thirty two rhinos
blocked the path and one of them had to be shot. At six we were still
several miles from camp, with the country wrapped in darkness. The water
was gone and only one shell remained for the big gun. Somewhere ahead
were miles of thorn scrub in which there might be rhinos or buffaloes.
Two days before I had killed two large buffaloes in the district through
which we must pass, and there was every likelihood of others still being
there. At seven we were hopelessly lost in a wide stretch of hippo
grass, and I had to fire a shot in the hope of getting an answering shot
from camp. In a couple of moments we heard the distant shot, and then
pressed on toward camp. The lion had been carried on ahead while we
stopped with the rhino, and so the news reached the camp before us. A
long line of porters came out to greet us and a great reception
committee was waiting at the camp. It was the first lion of the
expedition, and as such was the signal for great celebration. That night
there were native dances and songs around the big central camp-fire and
a wonderful display of pagan hilarity.
It had been a hard day. Fourteen hours without food, several hours
without water, and miles of hard tramping through thorn scrub in the
darkness and of long, broiling stretches in the blazing sunlight. It
seemed a good price to pay even for a lion, but that night, as I finally
stretched out on my cot, I was conscious from time to time of a glow of
pleasure that swept over me. It seemed that of all human gratifications
there was none equal to that experienced by the man who has killed his
first lion.
My second lion experience came three days later. With a couple of tents
and about forty porters our party of four had marched across to a point
a couple of miles from where I had killed the lion. We hoped to put in a
day or two looking for lions, some of which had been reported in that
district. The porters went on ahead with the camp equipment, while we
came along more slowly. Mr. Akeley had taken some close-range
photographs of rhinos, and we were just on the point of starting direct
for the new camp when we ran across two enormous rhinos standing in the
open plain. One was extremely large, with an excellent pair of horns,
and it was arranged that I should try to secure this one as a trophy,
while Mr. Akeley secured a photograph of the event. At thirty-five yards
I shot the larger one of the two, and it dropped in its tracks. The
other started to charge, but was finally driven away by shouting and by
shots fired in the air. The photograph was excellent and quite dramatic.
For an hour the gunbearers worked on the dead rhino and finally secured
the head and feet and certain desirable parts of the skin. At noon we
resumed our march for camp, two or three miles away. We had hardly gone
half the distance when one of the tent boys was seen far ahead, riding
the one mule that we had dared to bring down the Tana River. It was
evident that something important had occurred and we hurried on to meet
him.
"_Simba!_" he shouted, as soon as he could be heard. In a moment we had
the details. One of the saises had seen two lions, a large male and
female, quite near the camp. Porters were instructed to watch the beasts
until we should arrive, and now were supposed to be in touch with them.
We omitted luncheon and struck off at once in the direction indicated by
the tent boy. We soon came up to the porters and an instant later saw
the lions. It was a beautiful sight. The two animals were majestically
walking up the rocky slope of a low, fire-scorched hill a few hundred
yards away. The male was a splendid beast, with all the splendid dignity
of one who fears nothing in the whole wide world. From time to time the
two lions stopped and looked back at us, but with no sign of fear.
Several times they lay down, but soon would resume their stately course
up among the rocks.
I shall never forget the picture that lay before me. It was as though
some famous lion painting of Gérôme or Landseer had come to life,
sometimes the animals being outlined clearly against the blue sky and at
other times standing, with splendid heads erect, upon the rocks of the
low ridge that rose ahead of us.
We stalked them easily. Several porters were left where the lions could
constantly see them, while we three, Akeley, Stephenson and I, with our
six gunbearers, worked around the base of the hill until we were able to
climb up on the crest of it, being thus constantly screened from view of
the lions. At the crest was an abrupt outcropping of blackened rocks,
where we stopped to locate the two animals. They were nowhere to be
seen. Twenty-five yards farther along on the crest was another little
ledge of rocks, and we worked our way silently along to it in the
expectation that the lions might have advanced that far. But even then
our search disclosed nothing. For some time we waited, scouring the
neighborhood with our glasses, and had almost reached the conclusion
that the lions had made off down the other side of the hill and had
reached the cover of a shallow ravine some distance away. Then we saw
them--exactly where we had last seen them before we had started our
stalk. They were still together and showed no sign of alarm nor
knowledge of our presence so near them. At this time they were one
hundred and ten yards away. They lay down again behind the rocks and we
waited twenty minutes for them to show themselves. Off to our right and
in the valley another large male lion appeared and moved slowly away
among the low scrub trees.
Finally we decided to rouse the two lions by shouting, but before this
decision could be carried out the male rose above the rocks and stood
plainly in view. It had previously been arranged that Mr. Stephenson
should try for the male, while I should try for the female. In an
instant he fired with his big rifle, the lion whirled around and then
started running down the hill to the right.
Then the lioness appeared and I wounded her with my first shot. She ran
out in the open toward us, but evidently without knowing from where the
firing came. A second shot was better placed and I saw her collapse in
her tracks. Leaving the lioness, I went down to where Stephenson had
followed the lion. Several shots had been fired, but the lion was still
running, although badly wounded. Just as it reached a small tree down on
the slope a shot was put into a vital spot, and the lion went wildly
over on his side. Even then he managed to drag himself under the small
bushes surrounding the tree, where a moment later Mr. Stephenson killed
him with a shot from his .318 Mauser.
[Drawing: _"A Very Interesting Experience," Said I Coolly, a Couple
of Days Later_]
We measured and photographed the lion, and then I took my camera to get
a picture of the dead lioness up on the ridge. She was sitting up
snarling, and I was the most surprised person in the world. I shot at
her and she ran fifty yards to a small tree, where she came to a stop.
Two more shots from my big gun finished her, and the photograph was
finally secured.
Leaving the porters to watch the two lions, we followed the third lion
that had been seen in the valley. He had not gone far and we soon found
him, but too far away to get a shot. For an hour we followed him, but he
finally disappeared and could not be located again.
It was sundown when our porters reached camp with the two lions, and it
was then that we ate our long-deferred luncheon.
A week later, while marching from the Tana River to the Zeka River, Mr.
and Mrs. Akeley and I came across a large lion, accompanied by a
lioness. They were first seen moving away across a low sloping ridge of
the plains within a couple of miles of where we had killed the lion and
lioness a week before. We followed them and came up with them after a
brisk walk of ten minutes. Both were hiding in the grass near the crest
of the slope, and we could see their ears and eyes above the long grass.
We crouched down a hundred yards away and the lion rose to see where we
had gone. Mrs. Akeley fired and missed, but her second shot pierced his
brain and he fell like a log. We expected a charge from the lioness and
waited until she should declare herself. But she did not appear and her
whereabouts remained an anxious mystery until she was finally seen
several hundred yards away making her way slowly up a distant hill.
Half-way up she sat down and watched us as we made our way cautiously in
the grass to where her mate lay as he fell, stone dead. We afterward
followed her, but she escaped from view and could not be located. This
lion was the largest we had seen and measured nine feet from tip to tip.
This was our last experience with lions in the Trans-Tana country. After
that we went up in the elephant country on Mount Kenia, but that is a
story all in itself.
Lion hunting is the best kind of African hunting in one respect. One
feels no self-reproach in having killed a lion, for there is always the
comforting thought that by killing one lion you have saved the lives of
three hundred other animals. Every lion exacts an annual toll of at
least that number of zebras, hartebeests, or other forms of antelopes,
all of which are powerless to defend themselves against the great
creature that creeps upon them in cover of darkness. So a lion hunter
may consider himself something of a benefactor.