This, The Experts Say, Is About The
Annual Toll Of One Lion.
If the traveller gets his lion, he plays
even with the fauna of the country; if he gets two or more lions,
he has something to his credit.
This probably explains why the
game is still so remarkably abundant near the road and on the
very outskirts of the town.
We were now much in need of a fair quantity of meat, both for
immediate consumption of our safari, and to make biltong or
jerky. Later, in like circumstances, we should have sallied forth
in a businesslike fashion, dropped the requisite number of zebra
and hartebeeste as near camp as possible, and called it a job.
Now, however, being new to the game, we much desired good
trophies in variety. Therefore, we scoured the country far and
wide for desirable heads; and the meat waited upon the
acquisition of the trophy.
This, then, might be called our first Shooting Camp. Heretofore
we had travelled every day. Now the boys settled down to what the
native porter considers the height of bliss: a permanent camp
with plenty to eat. Each morning we were off before daylight,
riding our horses, and followed by the gunbearers, the syces, and
fifteen or twenty porters. The country rose from the river in a
long gentle slope grown with low brush and scattered candlestick
euphorbias. This slope ended in a scattered range of low rocky
buttes. Through any one of the various openings between them, we
rode to find ourselves on the borders of an undulating grass
country of low rounded hills with wide valleys winding between
them.
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