He Was A Spectacle Of Wildness As He Sat Before The Blazing Fire,--
His Joy By Day, His Companion And Protector In The Shades, The Only Step
Made By Him In Advance Of His Brethren The Cynocephali.
We were detained four days at Agjogsi by the nonappearance of the Gerad
Adan:
This delay gave me an opportunity of ascending to the summit of
Koralay the Saddleback, which lay about a mile north of our encampment. As
we threaded the rocks and hollows of the side we came upon dens strewed
with cows' bones, and proving by a fresh taint that the tenants had lately
quitted them. In this country the lion is seldom seen unless surprised
asleep in his lair of thicket: during my journey, although at times the
roaring was heard all night, I saw but one. The people have a superstition
that the king of beasts will not attack a single traveller, because such a
person, they say, slew the mother of all the lions: except in darkness or
during violent storms, which excite the fiercer carnivors, he is a timid
animal, much less feared by the people than the angry and agile leopard.
Unable to run with rapidity when pressed by hunger, he pursues a party of
travellers stealthily as a cat, and, arrived within distance, springs,
strikes down the hindermost, and carries him away to the bush.
From the summit of Koralay, we had a fair view of the surrounding country.
At least forty kraals, many of them deserted, lay within the range of
sight.
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