TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10634, 19 April 1900, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Literally the moefc extraLions that ordinary tale of tropical life Stopped a that has been published for Railway. some years comes from Mr

Patterson, one of the engineers of the Yailway line which is being built from Mombasa, in British East Africa, i to Uganda, The circumstances were of so remarkable a nature as to form the subject of a statement by Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, for in speaking of the slow progress of the line he explained that the unexpected difficulties met with included a pair of lions which had stopped the works for three -weeks. As a matter of fact, however, though the work was only actually stopped for three weeks, the panic induced by the attacks of these two lions lasted, with intervals, for nine months, during which time they killed and ate twenty-eight of the Indian coolies working on the line, and at least twice aa many native'labourers/ besides woundingjuunbere of Otfcew. The ii oO g lived' ia J

a pleasant valley, the side* of which w«» 1 ' covered with impenetrable thorn and jungle -« Through this valley ran the line of the tk]\. 1 way, and thither came in due time some & five or six thousand Indian railway coolies li with large numbers of natives and a ling of British officials, and some officers 'i \~\ and soldiers. The labourers slept in "camps \ M scattered up and down the line for a <li s . ' tonce of «ight miles. "Into those camp? the lions came, thrusting their giganticheads under the flaps of the tents or walk ing in at the doors of the huts. ThVi? ' first victim was a Sikh jemadar, taken from a tent shared by a dozen other workmen the next a coolie Then they raided tU camps regularly until the local length „« '• rail was finished and the bulk of the men moved up country out of the lions' beat But some hundreds were left behind, to build bridges and do permanent work.' ft' was then that the lions' reign of terror began. which ended in the complete stoppage of an Imperial enterprise supplied witfc every mechanism and appliance of civilise"."" } lion, from traction engines to armed troops." I

The situation was extraor- \ A Reign dinury. Nothing, as one f of Terror, writer remarks, could equal I < lie savugt>n*ss and sheer in«o> I lent contempt for man, .armed or unarmed, I white or black, of these two beasts. They I were utterly indifferent as to whom they I attacked, be he half naked, helpless native § or armed British officer. "Some they flawed. I some they devoured, some they carried off 1 and left sticking in thorn fences, because I they could not drag them through." At tirst 1 they took a man between'them, but later 1 on they would seize one apiece, perhaps 1 from the same hut or camp tire. For, cer.---l trary to the habit of lions and others of the I large carnivora, these two cared nothing for i fire, usually the hunter's best protecti&a I from attack, and they scorned firearms and I lamps. Night after night the terriiSed 1 camps awoke to hear the death shrieks o! 1 the-latest victim of the lions, and sickening I fear seized ail but the Europeans." Some I men lay and listened to the cracking of bones and the tearing of limbs within fifty yards [ of the place where they were, and sick men I in hospital died from sheer terror as they I listened to the monsters quarrelling over their feast." The panic strengthened until \ human endurance could stand the strain no I longer, and hundreds of the labourers, cry- I ing out that they had agreed to work for 1 wages, not to be food for lions or devils, I rushed to the line as the trains for the coast were approaching, and Hinging themselves across the metals, gave the engine-driww the choice either of passing over-theic bodies or of stopping to take them up and carrying them back to Mombaea.The few hundreds who remained "became arboreal"—for them Mr Patterson says he tried to find safe quarters at night, and they might be seen perched on the top of watertanks, roofs, and bridge-girders. "Every good-sized tree in camp had as many beds lashed to it aa the branches would bear. So many men got up a tree once when a camp was attacked, that it came down, the men falling close to the lions. Strange to say they did not heed them, but then they were busy devouring a man they had just seized." During all this time Mr Patterson, the engineer who tells this story, spent days in fruitlessly stalking the lions, and long nights in i watching and waiting for them to return to some half-eaten goat or donkey, which they had left the migHt before. He had several thrilling escapes, and the worst of luck; is 4 fact, it w-as the way on which the lions cc- $ caped him time after time that confirmed ' the Indians' belief that they were devils. / At last, at an interval of aboiit a week, he J managed to kill both the man-eaters—huge I marieless animals, one of them 9ft 6m, and I the other 9ft Sin long. Whereupon the \ relieved natives and Indiana prostrated themselves "before Km, laying their heads on feet. Hia feat was celebrated in. a poem in Hindustani, and the grateful workmen gave him a beautifully inscribed silver bowl, whidh now stands tn. his house between, the heads of the great man-eaters, mementoes of the greatest hunt lie ever undertook.

There seems some echo A Suggestion from war time in the fora latest religious movement, New FJag. which originated in

America, and proceeds under the general title of "The Christian Flag Extension Society." Mr Overton, a Sunday school superintendent afc Coney Island, first formulated the idea that all Christians throughout the world should have one flag, under which to march wl«B----occasion came, to demonstrate Christian loyalty. It appears that the need first suggested itself to 'him when, after marching his Sunday school to a service, each child waving a small American flag, lie noticed, a few days later, that a parade of liquor-sellers in pro- •

test against early closing carried precisely similar flags. On this Mr Overtoil decided 1 that the Sters and Stripes were quite too far-reaching for Church purposes. "Yet one cannot conceive of fla army without Its colours ,, —and! so this «>- ---ciety arose, pledged to provide and encourage the tise of, all over the world, a distinctively "Christian" flag. The scheffie 18 less original than Mr Overton appear* to think. What seems unfortunate is the still greater lack of originality in tins banaer upon which the Society has fixed its choice. The "Cbristiaa Flag" is in the old eolouW, red, white and Hue, already used to signify England, the United States, Prance, and Holland; the general flag, however, being white with a corner space of blue and a-*ed cross in the centre of the blue. This design seems as unexpressive, and as little effective, as could well have been demised. Certainly it requires some ingenuity to contrive an entirely new flag, but even th* Salvation Army's "blood and fire banner" carried more significance. Why not at least, having a precedent already in Chuica history, have returned to Constantine's -design and motto? A ground of celestial blue, bearing the cross above the meridian sun, with the words, "By this conquer," would have saved the United Christian flag from the reproach of Having less religious suggestion than tie most ordinary Church or Sunday school banner.