night, as you might imagine, they are the great scavengers and camp
cleaners of the country. Of vultures there are too few in this land,
probably because the blind bush robs them of the chance of spotting
their prey. Were it not for lions and hyaenas, we should be in a bad
way. For they come to eat all our dead animals, all the wastage of this
army, the tribute our transport animals are paying to fly and to
horse-sickness. For in spite of fairy tales about lions one must believe
the unromantic truth that a lion prefers a dead ox to a man, and a black
man to a white one. So you will not be surprised when I tell you that in
this army of ours of at least 30,000 men I have only had two cases of
mauling by the larger carnivora to deal with. And such cases as these
would all pass through my hands. There was only one case of lion
mauling, and that a Cape Boy who met a young half-grown cub on the road
and unwisely ran from it. At first curiosity attracted this animal, and
later the hunting instinct caused him to maul his prey. So they brought
him in with the severe blood-poisoning that sets in in almost all cases
of such a nature. For the teeth and claws of the larger carnivora are
frightfully infectious. This Cape Boy died in forty-eight hours. Yet one
other case was that of an officer who met a leopardess with cubs in the
bush when out after guinea fowl. She charged him, and he gave her his
left arm to chew to save his face and body. Then alarmed by his yells
and the approach of his companion she left him, and he was brought one
hundred miles to the railway. But he was in good hands at once, and when
I saw him the danger of blood-poisoning had gone and he was well upon
his way to health again.

The same experience have we had with snakes. The hot dry dusty roads and
the torn scrub abound with snakes and most of them of a virulently
poisonous quality. But one case only of snake-bite have I seen, and that
a native. The fact that the wild denizens of the field and forest are