THE LION. 33

the door, but my astonishment may well be conceived when
I found the entrance to it barred in such away. Although
the animal had not seen me, unarmed as I was escape
seemed impossible, yet I glided gently, scarcely knowing what
I meant to do, to the side of the house, up to the window
of my chamber, where I knew my loaded gun was standing.
By a most happy chance, I had set it into the corner close
by the window, so that I could reach it with my hand; for,
as you may perceive, the opening is too small to admit of
my having got in, and still more fortunately, the door of the
room was open, so that I could see the whole danger of
the scene. The lion was beginning to move. There was
no longer any time io think; I called softly to the mother
not to be alarmed, and invoking the name of the Lord,
fired my piece. The ball passed directly over the hair of
my boy’s head and lodged in the forehead of the lion,
immediately above his eyes and stretched him on the ground,
so that he never stirred more.” “Indeed,” says Professor
Lichtenstein, “we all shuddered as we listened to this relation.
Never, as he himself observed, was a more daring attempt
hazarded. Had he failed in his aim, mother and children
were all inevitably lost; if the boy had moved he had been
struck; the least turn in the lion and the shot had not been
mortal to him; and to consummate the whole, the head of the
creature was in some sort protected by the door-post.”
Attacked by In Phillips’s “Researches in South Africa,” the
a Lion. following account is given of the adventures of
a traveller which we quote from Jardine’s Naturalists’ Library
collated with other versions. “Our waggons, which were
obliged to take a circuifous route, arrived at last, and we
pitched our tent a musket-shot from the kraal, and, after
having arranged everything, went to rest, but were soon
disturbed; for, about midnight the cattle and horses, which
were standing between the waggons, began to start and
run, and one of the drivers to shout, on which every one