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Show I shot, but so badly that I wasted seven bullets at different ranges without touching her. The first six did not seem to annoy her at all. but the last hit the ground just under her teeth, and either the bullet so close, frightened her or a stone hit her, for she sprang off with a snarl anil a flourish of her tail and. putting on the pace, in a minute or two ran clean away from us. I was terribly disappointed disap-pointed and annoyed with myself, and I thought of course, that everything was over for the day after all this shooting; but Abdullah, who was almost al-most weeping, hardly gave me time to get my wind a little before he rushed me back again. As we ran round the place where we had first seen the lioness, a hue lion appeared walking slowly out of another thicket towards us. As I shot, he turned and plunged thorugh an opening in the bushes to our right. We ran round an outstanding bush to head him if he broke out, and met a lion facing us. Just as I fired I heard a moan to the right, so I was sure it was not the same lion. This one staggered away at the shot and i'ell stone dead close by. hill again; but here, oo, we were disappointed, dis-appointed, and gravitated back to where we had first lost the spoor. We knew that the lion had not gone straight on, nor had he turned back; he must have gone along the top of the ridge and then crossed into other stony hills where is was hopeless to try to track him. Abdullah, who is never defeated, said there was a big river-bed further on in the direction in which the lion was going. It seemed a very slender chance, as he might have turned off I anywhere in between, but it was the only one, so off we went. We were evidently in luck that day, for we had only gone about a quarter of a mile when we struck the spoor. The lion seemed now to have made up his mind as to his direction, for he kept on straight down the middle of the river-bed. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and in places the sand was very deep, so that V3 were not sorry when at last the track led into a little island of bush in the great flat sand. There was no doubt the lion was at home, for on casting round no sign was pei-ceptible of a track coming out. The island, raised a little above the river-bed, was formed of a mass of thick-tangled bush and creepers clustered round a few big trees. The water coming down the river after heavy rain had washe.t it roughly into the form of a triangle, the apex of which pointed up the river. From this point the sides widened out to the other end, wnich was about thirty yards broad, the whole length being somewhat under a hundred yards.. Driving the Lion to Bay. The shape made it : a easy place to drive, for a little way out from tne quite unable to move. All the life in him seemed concentrated in his eyes, which glared at us furiously. Another shot put him out of his misery. The first shot, a very bad one, had grazed the spine just in front of the withers; another quarter of an inch higher and it would have missed altc ; t ler. This lion was quite maneless, except ex-cept for a few long hairs on each side of the neck, and his teeth were worn down quite short, so he was evidently very old. He was in very good condition, condi-tion, notwithstanding, but his stomach was quite empty, which accounted for his going so far before lying up. We had to stop at the main camp for the night when we got there, and did not follow up our camels till the next day. I have described this track rather at length because it is a good example of many similar days. Perils of the Man Eater. My first experience in tracking lions was early in 1892, and the night before be-fore was rather an exciting one. After hunting elephants unsuccessfully for about a month, we were on our vay south, when we arrived one day at some villages where the natives had been very much bothered by five lions which were said to be still in the neighborhood. A girl had been killed two days before, and an enormous amount of damage had teen done among the sheep and cattle. The first day we camped there two of our party had shooting zerebas made at the village vil-lage to which the lions generally came, and just before sunset they went off there. I tied up our two donkeys just outside out-side the camp, on the chance that the lions might come and look us up. Just after ilark we were having dinner in the tent when there was a scuffle out- We had a shot or two at the sound, and the beasts, whatever they were, went away. As at that time we knew nothing about' lions, we were not quite sure that they were not hyenas after all; but Abdullah stuck to it they were lions, so we got our beds and lay down one on each side of the opening, just behind the fence to w-atch, hoping that the brutes would come back. Nothing furtfccr happened, however. At daybreak we sallied out to see if by any chance we had managed man-aged to hit a lion, but we only found two or three dead hyenas. One of these brutes had been partly eaten; we thought at the time by other hyenas, hy-enas, as it was still too dark o make out track's. We cam i to the conclusion conclu-sion we had made i'dicts e ourselves, and had been shooting all night at hyenas, acd we did not feel any the better whtn our friends came back from their- night at the village and told us we had probably frightened every lion out of the country by our bombardment. Reading the Lion Tracks. Abdullah still insisted that there had been lions round the camp, and a little later we found the spoor of one big lion by the body of the half-eaten half-eaten hyena. The ground was very stony and there were no other tracks to be seen, but one lion could hardly have dragged the donkey and heavy barrel away so quickly, so there were probably more. The other hunters had got hold of a man at the village who said he knew where the lions always lay, so they went with aim. Soon after they left, Abdullah, who had been hunting about, came and toJ.d me that he had picked "p the track of one iion on soft ground a little lit-tle way from camp, and that we ought Death of the Jungle Lord. Abdullah called up Jama and the pony boy, and they soon had the hide off and tied on the pony. I thought all the time that Abdullah knew all about the other one. but as he seemed to be going right home, I asked him if we had not better go and look for it, and he replied that it was the same lion all the time, and that I had missed it the first shot. I did not feel quite sure about it myself, but the moan in the bushes could only have come from a wounded beast, so I told him we had better go and look anyway. any-way. He evidently thought it was waste of time, but when we got back to where the lion had been hit we soon found some blood, and going quietly down a little path between the "irgin" bushes we came round a corner cor-ner almost on top of the lion. He was stone dead. I was very pleased at scoring off Abdullah, as he had shown such evident disgust at my shooting. We met one of our party on our way back to camp, and told him he might run across the lioness if he followed our track back to the place we had come from. An hour after we got back to camp he came galloping up, having seen two Mons, curiously enough both males, and had shot one with a better mane than either of mine. I have at another time 'described mmmm " steal forward until cue lion 'is sighted or ringed in a small clump o; bush. Then, when all is over, and the hkin is being taken off, how pleasant, it is to sit in the shade. Listening to the excited talk of the natives and letting let-ting your nerves quiet down again after t he hopes and fears of the morning. morn-ing. You ride home to camp with the lion skin behind your saddle, while one of your men after another gives bis version of the morning s proceedings proceed-ings in a hunting song. On the other band, when you get a shot, and miss after a long and difficult (rack, it seems as if any number of lions killed in the future will never make up for the loss of this one, wfc'ch is always the biggest lion, carrying the finest mane you have ever seen. The ride home to camp is then a silent one, as no lion means no sheep for the men, and they are correspondingly downhearted. down-hearted. The first thing to be done in tracking track-ing is to find fresh spoor. Natives will often bring news of spoor, but unluckily the average villager's idea of a fresh track is rather hazy. I have several times gone a long way to find at the end a track several days old. On one occasion two natives arrived, saying there were fresh lion tracks in a river-bed, luckily not more that half a mile from camp, but when we got there the fresh lion tracks turned out to be the spoo;- of two hyenas, hy-enas, at least a week old. The spoor of the large spotted hyena is not unlike that of a lioness on certain ground, but the difference can easily be told, because a hyena has claws like a dog, whereas the re tractive claws of a lion are al'vays sheathed and leave no mark. The bctrt way to find spoor is to look for it yourself with good trackers Should there be any villages near camp which lions have been in the nabtt of raiding it is very necessary to get there as early as possible in the morning. If once the large flocks of sheep and goats and herds of camels which have been shut ui in the vil lages all night are let out, the ground all about is a mass of ind.stinguish-able ind.stinguish-able footprints, and every path from the village is choked with long strings of beasts going off to their feeding grounds. Hitting off a lion's spoor under these circumstances is almost impossible, and thedust raised by the herds is very disagreeable. Besides villages, any well in the neighborhood is a good place to look for spoor. If a lion is about there ought to be no difficulty in picking up his spoor within a day or two. Baffling Ways of the Jungle Folk. Rather curious coincidences are sometimes brought to light by spoor. Not very long after the date of the story just related, one of our party went to a place where two lions had been killing regularly, and sat up two nights for them with a donkey as bait. The lion's must have left the district for a day or two while he was there, as there were no fresh tracks to be found anywhere about. The day after he came back to camp I happened to ride out in that direction. Soon after we started we came on the spoor of two lions, which led us along a path till we came to the shooting zereba. The night after he had left, the lions had walked over the very spot where his donkey had been tied up in the middle of the path. A little later, again. I happened to be at a place where he had camped a few days before. A lion roared near my camp several times in the night, and next morning I heard he had taken a sheep from a village close by. We picked up his spoor in a riverbed river-bed near the camp, and after following follow-ing it for some distance came to some wells. The lion had drunk twice, and between the drinks had laid down HE PLUNGED OFF WITH AN ANGRY SNARL. Lion Shooting . in Somaliland By Lord Delamere Foremosl among the great hunting hunt-ing aulliorilies of the English speaking speak-ing world is Lord Delamere. lie is credited with being the heaviest killer kill-er in the party which bagged the record number of African lions some few gears ago. In East Central Africa, Af-rica, his prowess is familiar to every native. Not long ago a localityJjesei with lions sent a delegation four hundred miles to call on Lord Delamere Dela-mere to ash him to come and wipe out the destroyers of their cattle. In this article he vividly contrasts the theory and practice of Hon hunting, in the region which Ex-P resident Roosevelt will invade. Hlion tracking I ever saw lasted five full hours and is so memorable in several sev-eral respects that I of lion hunting. Two of my men got badly mauled by a lion, so our camp had to stop where it was till they could be moved. After a time one of them was able to walk about with his arm in a sling, and the other was getting on well, so one night I decided to leave the big camp next day and go with two or three camels to some villages only a day's march away. Early the next morning Mahomed Ma-homed Noor, the headman, started with the camels. I stopped behind to get some breakfast. Just as we were going to follow, a camelman, who had gone up the river-bed close by to get some water, came running back to say that a lion had been down to drink at one of the shallow sand wells in the night. I started at once with Abdullah Abdul-lah and two other trackers, telling my pony-boy to follow on as soon as he could get the pony saddled. When tracking, I have always found it the best plan to have the pony led some distance behind. The boy ought to have no difficulty in following the tracks of two or three men and a lion, and if the pony is kept close up, it is sure to stamp or blow its nose at the critical moment. When we got to the well there was the spoor plain enough in the sand, but rather blurred by some rain which had fallen at daybreak. This made the tracking a little difficult after we left the river-bed, but when we had followed it slowly for some distance, we came to a place where the lion had lain down under a thick bush, evidently evi-dently to shelter from the rain, as the spoor after this was quiet distinct on the top of the damp ground. This made us think we were in for a short track, for it must have been light when the lion went on again from here, and lions generally lie up shortly short-ly after the sun rises; but this day proved an exception, because it was cloudy and cool through the forenoon. Trailing the King of Beasts. The spoor now led us along a sandy path, where we could follow it as fast as we could walk. When it turned off into the bush we quite expected to see the lion at any moment; but not a bit of it he wandered about through endless clumps of mimosa a d "irgin" bushes, as if he did not mean to lie up at all. The track at last .ed us down a little sandy watercourse, which it followed fol-lowed for some distance. Up to this time we had had no real difficulty in making it out, but now came our first serious check. The nullah turned off along the side of a stony ridge, and, instead of going along it, the lion had turned up the hill. We had got the general direction th the lion had been going in, but this was no good to us, as on casting forward in the same line to the bottom of the other side of the ridge whore thare was some sandy ground, we could find no sign of his having passed in that direction. We spent some time hunting hunt-ing about, growing less hopeful as time went on. A man following a trail by sight certainly has an enormous enor-mous advantage over a hound hunting it by nose, because time is of no particular object to him, and every direction can be tried in turn. After making out cast forward we went back to the little water-course, and followed that down for some distance, hoping that the lion had turned down under the fence of a shooting zereba, which had been made to watch the water. After drink. ng the second time he had gone away. Now and then when tracking you come across places where lions have killed, and if it is on sand 01 bare soil, you can tell everything that has happened almost as well as it you had seen it. We were camped onco on the edge of a river-bed and thick covert ran right down to the bach of the camp. One night there was a tremendous scuffling In these bushes, so in the morning 1 went out to see what bad been going on, and found that two lions had been chasing a warthog, which had just saved its bacon by getting underground It must have been a very near thing, as the lions had ploughed great furrows fur-rows in the sand at the mouth of the hole, showing they had pulled up pretty pret-ty sharp. Warthogs generally go to ground when pursued, and as there is no second opening to the burrows and presumably no chamber at the end where they can turn, they always go in backwards. This has actually been seen by sportsmen who have been riding after them with a speai I should think this pig can hardly have had the time to do this. Perhaps he got jammed in head first, as he refused re-fused to be smoked out when we tried it. By permission of Longmans. Green & Co., New York. (Copyright, 1909, by BenJ. B. Hampton.) point one could easily command the whole of it. The lion was almost certain cer-tain to break out of one of the sides towards the bush on the banks of the river-bed, in which case I should get an easy broadside shot. If we followed fol-lowed the track into the place, the noise we were sure to make would be very likely to get the beast on his legs, and he would sneak out at one side as we went in at the other, especially es-pecially as the water had left a lot of dead sticks along the edges, over which it would be impossible to walk quietly. Abdullah also said that from the way he had wandered about this lion must be very hungry, and would sleep lightly. These considerations decided us to drive. I posted myself with Abdullah a few yards out from the point, and the other two men, having hav-ing collected some stones, began throwing throw-ing ttiem in at the far end. Abdullah was right about this lion sleeping lightly; for at the first stone there was a growl and a crash in the bushes and then, for a minute or two, not a sound. The men started to walk down, one on each side, shooting and throwing throw-ing in stones. I was watching them, and wondering what had happened to the lion, when there was a faint crackling just in front of us, and he appeared at the point of the island. Although we were standing within a few yards of him, and absolutely in the open, he did not see us. He was facing straight towards us. and was so close that I did not like to fire at him as, on receiving the bullet, bul-let, he would be very likely to plunge in the direction he was going and be into us; nor did I want him to come any closer; so, as he stepped down on to the sand. I moved my rifle up towards my shoulder to attract his attention. at-tention. He saw the movement at once, stopped dead, and turned his bead sharply towards us. For the fraction of a second I thought he was going to be startled into charging, but he plunged off to the left with an angry snarl at us over his shoulder. As he passed I pulled, and he skated along on his stomach and fell dow-n a little ledge in the sand. This slewed him round, and he lay facing us, spread-eagled or the sand, evidently i ! side, and it was evident that something some-thing was attacking our donkeys. It was pitch dark, and we firr several shots in the direction of the sound before we discovered that the attacking attack-ing beasts were hyenas. We did not mind having a donkey killed instantaneously instan-taneously by a lion, but we had not bargained for the poor beasts getting mauled by hyenas, so taking a lamp we went out to see what had happened. hap-pened. My donkey had got off with a nasty bite in the hollow of the hind leg above the hock, and we had him taken into tne camp at once. The other was completely disembowelled and must have been killed instantly. We could not find any dead hyenas, but we were pretty sure that on. or two must have been hit. Seeing that if the lions did come to the dead donkey don-key there would not oe much chance of hitting them on so dark a night. We pulled the carcass right under the skerm or fence round the camp, and, to prevent hyenas dragging it away, tied a rope to one of its legs, and passing it over the fence, fastened it to a heavy water barrel inside the camp. We sat up for a bit and got a few shots at hyenas, and then we went to bed, telling the sentry to keep a sharp lookout and to let us know if lions came to the carcass. Some time after I awoke to find Abdullah bending over me, with my rifle in his hand. He was frightfully excited, and all I could get out of him was "Libah, sahib, libah!" ("Lion, sir. lion!") Jumping up I rushed out just as my companion fired two shots into the darkness. The first thing I saw when I got to where he stood was that a great piece of the skerm round the camp had disappeared, leaving a broad gap. I could not for a moment think what had happened, and then it struck me that when the carcase had been dragged away the water barrel must have got hitched against the inside of the interlaced mimosa boughs and the whole lot had gone together. to-gether. It was frightfully dark outside, out-side, and we stood peering out for some time without being able to distinguish dis-tinguish anything; but after a few minutes we could hear something tearing at the flesh quite close by; to follow it. At that time none of us knew much about tracking, and 'we had had such bad luck after the elephants ele-phants that we did not think much of our shikaries, and I did not think it was much good, Abdullah persuaded me and I went. After we uad followed the track for some distance I quite caught his enthusiasm, and when the single track was joined by three others, oth-ers, T was divided between delight at the prospect of having four lions all to myself and the thought that perhaps per-haps I had more on my .hands than I could manage alone. After a track of about an hour we came in sight of two or three big thickets of "irgin" bushes surrounded by open mimosa scrub ana intersected by narrow paths. My second shikari at that time was a very tall fellow, called Jama, with enormous feet. Several Sev-eral times during the track Abdullah had turned round to pitch into him for making such a noise, and now he confided con-fided to me that "Jama walk all same cow," and that we had better leave him behind here with the pony and boy, as the lions were sure to be in the place in front of us. Knowing nothing about it, I agreed and went on with Abdullah. We were walking quietly along the outside of one of the thickets when Abdullah suddenly clutched me by the arm and pointed towards a tree standing on the edge of the bush yards off. The tree was divided into two towards the bottom, and the sun was throwing the shadow of a bush on the ground inside the hollow. iThis was where Abdullah was pointing, point-ing, getting more excited but I could make out nothing at all, until a great yellow beast moved suddenly out of the shadow and slipped away on the far side. I fired from the hip, letting off both barrels into the tree. We rushed round to the other side of the thicket just in time to see a fine lioness come out. I could not get a clear shot at once, and when I did, after running some distance, I was shaking so that I could not get on her at all, and missed. She kept lobbing along just ahead, every now and then stopping to look around and show her teeth at us. Each time she stopped two different methods of hunting lions. One of them could hardly be. called a method at all, as it depended on news brought in by natives as to rfhere a lion had actually been seen. The second plan consisted of tying np a donkey for a bait, and sitting up to watch at night A much more interesting in-teresting way of limiting lions than either of these and a very successful success-ful one ir the native shikaries employed em-ployed are any good, is this process of tracking them. A lion lies up in some cool, shady place for the day, unless the sky is overcast and the sun cannot get out, when he will occasionally oc-casionally be found hunting at any hour. If you can strike his spoor of the night hefore there is a very good chance of following it up to where the lion lies, should the ground be suitable. There is no form of hunting hunt-ing so exciting as this. When the spoor is found there is generally nothing to show if you have struck it early or late in the lion's wanderings, wander-ings, so that it is quite a chance whether it leads you for hours over all sorts of country, or whether, after half a mile down on a sandy river bed or path, it turns off into a thick patch of reeds or bush close by, where the lion is lying. It is extraordinary how the excitement grows as time goes on, and still you keep the track sometimes some-times very slowly, where only now and then part of a footprint can be seen on a soft place between the stones, at other times as fast as you can walk over soil where the track is visible many yards ahead. And when the spoor is lost and minute after minute goes by while you cast about vainly in every direction, how wretched you are, and how quickly your spirits rise again when a low whistle or snapping of the fingers announces an-nounces that one of the trackers has hit it off further on! At last certain signs show that you are getting near the end; the trackers take off their sandals and tuck up their loin-cloths under their belts, lest a corner flapping in the wind should scare the lion. For the first time you take your rifle from the native who has had charge of it, and, with your head shikari carrying a second rifle, |