The Lion in Africa
_IONS, in their own country of Africa—there are few left in India in these days—have always been dangerous and troublesome neighbours to natives and white settlers ; and it would seem, from a recent telegram from Nairobi, that their numbers and daring are still a deadly menace in certain parts of the country. The natives of the Masai Reserve have for some time found their cattle so harried that they called in the assistance of Government, who four months ago sent to their aid a white hunter. In these four months, assisted by the Masai, this hunter killed no fewer than eighty lions and ten leopards.
In fairness to the Masai, who are a very brave and were once a very warlike race, it should be said that in the old days, when lions troubled them, it was their custom to send out a party of young warriors, who, with shields and long spears, rounded up the foe and never left him till they killed him. In these furious encounters many of them suffered death and dangerous wounds. Then, in the interests of peace, their long spears and great shields were taken from them by. the British authority and with short assegais only they were practically defenceless. It is good to learn that these brave pastoral• people have beenre-armed with their war shields and long, huge-bladed spears. The late Colonel Roosevelt, in the account of his famous hunting and collecting expedition of 1909-10, gave a stirring account of the similar round-up of a huge black-maned lion by hunters of the Nandi tribe in Kenya. These men, who use a shorter Shield than the Masai, but carry long spears, made it a condition of their display that no white hunter should assist them ; and Roosevelt and his friends were merely Onlookers at a marvellous scene. The lion being located and rounded up, the Nandi hunters surrounded and advanced steadily upon him. Suddenly he charged at close quarters, and in ten seconds, after a furious fight, during which he wounded severely two natives, all was over. The slain lion looked somewhat like a huge and ferocious porcupine, with a dozen spears through his body. Only the very bravest of men can venture to take such risks with so dangerons an adversary. In the days of the blood-stained tyrant, Chaka, King of Zululand, hiS young men were _sent out to kill lions in similar fashion, many of them dying at the command of their overlord.
British sportsmen have, for more than a hundred years past, been renowned as lion-hunters in Africa, and the names of such hunters as Cornwallis Harris, Gordon Cumming, Oswell, Baldwin, and Selous will always 'be remembered in the annals of the earlier years of big-game hunting. These men used very inferior muzzle-loading fire-arms, compared with the perfect weapons of the present day ; they faced the lion on foot and their exploits were remarkable. Selous, in his earlier days, shot with an ancient Dutch muzzle:loading elephant gun, carrying 4 oz. bullets, backed by 17 drams of trade po7der: The 'weapon weighed 15 lb.; and was as forinidable almost to the pursuer as the pursued. During his long career he killed thirty-one lionS and was in at the death of eleven others. The Boer hunters of former days were, of course, compelled to kill lions—as men are in East Africa at the present time—for the protection of their flocks and herds. But many of thern, who became professional ivory hunters, had often to slay the lion in self=defence, or from the mere love of what the Englishman calls sport. Old Piet Jacobs; whom Selous knew *ell, was one' of these. During his long career he killed over a hundred lions, with very primitive weapons, yet he died in his bed. Jan Viljoen, a very famous hunter, whom the writer can remember in his retirement in the Western Transvaal, near. Marko, was just such another Voer- trekker and shot some scores of lions.
William Judd, who had been a professional hunter for many years in Kenya, had killed forty-eight lions and assisted at the death .of more than forty others. It was sad to learn, quite recently, that this brave man and great sportsman, the friend and comrade of Selous and Theodore Roosevelt, had just been killed in an encounter with an elephant in East Africa. Mr. E. Blayney Percival, formerly Game Warden in one of the Kenya Reserves, is credited with at least fifty lions. Sir Alfred Pease, Mr. W, D. M. Bell, Colonel Curtis (who killed twenty-seven lions in Somaliland years ago), General Sir A. Paget, General Mellii, V.C., and others have all had great success in their lion-hiniting adventures. It is probable that the most remarkable scores of the present day among lions may, on the authority' of Sir Alfred Pease, be accredited to the brothers Harold and Clifford Hill. Of these Mr. Harold Hill is to be credited with 136 lions and his brother rather more. COlonel Roosevelt and' his son, during their African expedition, killed seventeen lions between them.: ' Mt. Paul Rainey; the American hunter, who rounded up liohs in East Mika with a pack of largely Ainerican hounds, is said to have-killed as many as 200 lions during his hunting trip, some years back. By - his method, • . however, the attention of the lion was completely Fixed on the pack of hounds and_ its death easily accomplished. once A hunter on described this form of chase as " Just like a rat hunt and about as dangerous !
That the ordinary encounter with so fierce and dangerous a foe as the lion is, even in these days of perfect fire-arms; by no means devoid ,of risk, is easily proved by recent happenings in East Africa. Men not accustomed to African hunting and not previously used to dangerous game have suffered many casualties ; and it is reported; on good evidence, that in a recent year of forty sportsmen who hunted lions seriously twenty were badly mauled. Of these twenty more than half were killed or died from the effects of their wounds.
Plentiful as the lion still is in various parts of Africa, he is nevertheless slowly being exterminated. Wherever settlements are made and pastoral farming is introduced, he has, surely, to vanish from the scene. They are no longer to be found in Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, Natal, and the greater part of the Transvaal. Nowadays, yon cannot encounter them in South Africa till you reach Khama's Country, the N.E. Transvaal, and the Lake N'gami region. In Northern Africa lions have vanished from Morocco and I believe from Algeria ; but below the Sahara Desert they are to be found from the Northern Sudan and Abyssinia to the countries I have indicated in the south of the continent. The lion, in fact, has still a vast amount of wild and little explored territory in which to wander, often unmolested, and his roar will, no doubt, resound in Africa for more than a century to come, H. A. BRYDEN.
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