How Of Two
Equally Matched Warriors Of The Herd One Will Give Way In The
Fight, While Still Uninjured, Before His Perhaps Badly Wounded
Antagonist.
The casual observer might-and often does-say that
all bears are cowardly, all bucks are easily killed, or the
reverse, according as the god of chance has treated him to one
spectacle or the other.
As well try to generalize on the human
race-as is a certain ecclesiastical habit-that all men are vile
or noble, dishonest or upright, wise or foolish.
The higher we go in the scale the truer this individualism holds.
We are forced to reason not from the bulk of observations, but
from their averages. If we find ten bucks who will go a mile
wounded to two who succumb in their tracks from similar hurts, we
are justified in saying tentatively that the species is tenacious
of life. But as experience broadens we may modify that statement;
for strange indeed are runs of luck.
For this reason a good deal of the wise conclusion we read in
sportsmen's narratives is worth very little. Few men have
experience enough with lions to rise to averages through the
possibilities of luck. ESPECIALLY is this true of lions. No beast
that roams seems to go more by luck than felis leo. Good hunters
may search for years without seeing hide nor hair of one of the
beasts. Selous, one of the greatest, went to East Africa for the
express purpose of getting some of the fine beasts there, hunted
six weeks and saw none. Holmes of the Escarpment has lived in the
country six years, has hunted a great deal and has yet to kill
his first. One of the railroad officials has for years gone up
and down the Uganda Railway on his handcar, his rifle ready in
hopes of the lion that never appeared; though many are there seen
by those with better fortune. Bronson hunted desperately for this
great prize, but failed. Rainsford shot no lions his first trip,
and ran into them only three years later. Read Abel Chapman's
description of his continued bad luck at even seeing the beasts.
MacMillan, after five years' unbroken good fortune, has in the
last two years failed to kill a lion, although he has made many
trips for the purpose. F. told me he followed every rumour of a
lion for two years before he got one. Again, one may hear the
most marvellous of yarns the other way about-of the German who
shot one from the train on the way up from Mombasa; of the young
English tenderfoot who, the first day out, came on three asleep,
across a river, and potted the lot; and so on. The point is, that
in the case of lions the element of sheer chance seems to begin
earlier and last longer than is the case with any other beast.
And, you must remember, experience must thrust through the luck
element to the solid ground of averages before it can have much
value in the way of generalization.
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