LIONS OF HISTORY.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 48, 20 July 1908, Page 8

LIONS OF HISTORY.

"No lion story I have heard or read,” says Mi*. Selous, who ought to be an authority on lion stories, "equals in its long sustained and dramatic interest the story of the Teavo man-eaters as told by Colonel Patterson.” 'Hie reference is to ‘The Man-Eaters of Tsavo,” written *?y Colonel J. H. Patterson while an engineer engaged on the construction of the Uganda Railway, and now published by Messrs. Macmillan. The author would be famous in lion lore if only for the fact that one of his exploits was referred to by the late Lord Salisbury while Prime Minister. That was the case of the two lions who for three weeks put a stop to the construction of the railway, owing to the "most unfortunate taste.’ they had conceived for the native workmen. They were never, says Colonel Patterson, frightened or flurried.

"Having once marked down a victim, they would allow nothing to deter them securing him, whether he were protected by a thick fence, or inside a clqsed tent, or sitting round a brightly burning fire. Shots, shouting and firebrands they alike held in derision.” One of them visited the hospital, wounded two patients and carried off a third. When after many tribulations, Colonel Patterson# killed both these animals the natives celebrated the event by presenting him with a silver boull, as well as a long poem in Hindustani begining with the praise of Alla.l and gqing on to mention the depredations of the lions :

Because of the fear of these denjons some seven or eight hundred of the labourers deserted, and remained idle ; Some two or three hundred still remained, but they were haunted by this terrible dread. And because of fear of their lives would sit in their huts, their hearts full of foreboding and terror. Every one of them kept a fire burning at night, and none dared to close his in sleep : yet would some of them be carried away to destruction. The lion’s roar was such that the very earth would tremble at the sound, and where was the man who did not feel afraid ? On all sides arqse weeping and wailing, and the people would sit ami cry like cranes, complaining of

the deeds of the lions, and describing in much detail the prowess of Patterson Sahib. Another man-eater of renown was a lion at Kimaa, which made a speciality of railway men

He was a most daring brute, quite indifferent as to whether he carried off the station-master, the signalman, or the pointsman ; and one night, in his efforts to obtain

a meal, he actually climbed up on to the roof of the station buildings and tried to tear off the corrugated iron sheets. At this the terrified baboo in charge of the telegraph instrument below sent the following laconic message to the Traffic Man-

ager : —"Lion fighting with station. Send urgent succour.” Fortunately he was not victorious in his "fight with the station”; butjie tried so hard to get in that he cut his feet badly on the iron sheeting, leaving large bloodstains on the

roof. It was this same brute which one day broke into a shunted railway carriage, in which were sleeping three men who had come to shoot him, and carried off one of them—one of several stories of Colonel Patterson’s in which the hunter became the hunted.