LIONS IN GARDEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 June 1922, Page 7

LIONS IN GARDEN

LIFE IN KENYA. A correspondent forwards to the “Observer” the following letter received from a settler hi Kenya Colony (German East Africa), descriptive of the perils in which many are required to live and the way in which daily unforeseen difficulties are met by them; — We had a most exciting time just before Christinas. First, our houseboys went for each other with knives, and smashed the big carver in two, and the soup tureen, two plates, a dish, and some tumblers (tumblers cost 4s each and the smallest china bowl 10s, so we are ruined). The cook, being an amiable savage, also bit a huge piece out of the houseboy s arm. We beat them oil. Hardly had the yells from that subsided when up rushed one of the herds to say a lion had broken into our cattle boma and eaten ail ox. lhe boma is about seven minutes from the camp where we sleep in open tents! Next night we got over Mrs M., a great shikari, and her manager, and the family, fortified with food and drink, bunged themselves at dusk into a little thorn zareba built in the boma facing the kill. The nights were so dark that they could not see anything; all they did was to 1 train their rifles on the kill and pop off when the scrunching of bones told them something was there. Terrific growlings, ■ then silence. Our head herd K. came leaping from behind crymg out the lion 1 was dead, so Mr N. and D. (the writer’s son) left the zareba; but the lion was not dead, only stunned, and jumped up and knocked Mr N. down. D. and K. were ■ through the thorn hedge like streaks. Mr • N., being in shorts, felt the lion slobber against his knee,, and shouted: “He s got I me,- for God’s sake, shoot,” so Mrs M. blazed off, not knowing if she were shooting the lion or her manager. As a matter of fact, the lion was too badly hurt to attack. X. (husband of writer) was all this time trying to light a lamp, and Mr N. somehow got back. Next morning they found the lion in a thicket above the camp, about five minutes away, and I), finished it off, and has been given the skin. It measured 9ft 4in; unluckily wc are too broke to do more than get the skin tanned. I was sent to a neighbour’s to sleep, to my intense annoyance, for I am not afraid, and hate snakes much worse, and am more annoyed .by frogs which get into my boots, and which I scoop up off the floor with a butterfly net—a gorgeous way of catching them. I am afraid I collect and give them to the ducks. X. was rather afraid to leave me alone in camp in case the- lion broke this way, and in case the boys started murdering themselves again, and I up here without a gun, so I slept at the B.’s, returning at 6 a.m. After breakfast, hearing the shots when they were tracking the lion, I thought: “Well, I can’t be out of this,” and dashed up the hillside and came in just at the kill. Then whilst they were tying him up lor the native to bling in, slinging him on to a tree stem, I ran down to the hut to get some tea ready, as they were so hot, and met a most excited native screaming “More lions! Up rushed our neighbours, the B.’s armed to the teeth. They had seen me jumping up the hill, armed with nothing more deadly than my umbrella, and with apparently a lioness bounding after me. However, we luckily never met, nor did the mam party, who had no ammunition left. Mr N. always said there were three lions the previous night, but X., who makes it a personal matter, wouldn’t have it. Really, the lioness was getting back to her cubs, for a native came across her with three cubs a few days before.

That night D. and three other young men sat up again and wounded a lioness, but failed to get her in the morning. Then we set a trap, but only caught hyenas, which the lionesses ate; then they departed, probably only one by tins time; but siiifee then three have been seen on the lower farm, and pad-marks upon the drive, to X.’s annoyance. He thinks, by saying grandly, “We don’t get lions” that that will keep them off, but when our neighbours have lost fourteen oxen our turn must come. Our thorn boma is most inefficient, and I can’t persuade X. to ge it strengthened, though I periodically climb up a little knoll and jump oyer the thorns into the boma. I really think the average lion should jump as well as I can. Two elephants have been killed just above us, about eight miles off. We really don t want them. A linen tent would be singularly little protection. Wo are still harvesting with a fresh lot of labour, costing £3O a recruit. Everyone expects an early season-reason un hnown-so everyone’s farm is m a great mess like ours. Some fields being har vested, some ploughed, so as to take a ..cnioM of the rain, if it comes.