Present, Carollus, and Adonis then swam in and brought him through. We
landed him by an old hippopotamus footpath, and the day being damp and
cold, we kindled a fire, beside which we skinned him.

While this was going forward I had a painful duty to perform, viz. to
load one barrel, and blow out Rascality's brains, whom the lion had
utterly disabled in his after-quarters. Thus ended this protracted and
all but unsuccessful hunt; for when I at length managed to shoot him,
the dogs were quite tired of it, and, the reeds being green, I could
not have set them on fire to force him out.

The lion proved to be a first-rate one; he was in the prime of life,
and had an exquisitely beautiful coat of hair. His mane was not very
rank; his awful teeth were quite perfect, a thing which in lions of
his age is rather unusual; and he had the finest tuft of hair on the
end of his tail that I had ever seen in a lion.

In the chase, my after-rider, who fortunately did not carry my rifle,
got a tremendous capsize from bad riding, a common occurrence with
most after-riders who have been employed in my service. The afternoon
was spent in drying the mane of the wet lion, skinning out the feet,
and preserving the skin with alum and arsenical soap.

Hunting the Giraffe.


Mr. Cumming thus describes the giraffe. These gigantic and exquisitely
beautiful animals, which are admirably formed by nature to adorn the
fair forests that clothe the boundless plains of the interior, are
widely distributed throughout the interior of Southern Africa, but are