A V O Y A G E t o T H E ture "had paffed, .from feeing buffaloes, which bad efcaped from the clutches of lions, 'and bore the marks of the claws o f -thefe animals about their mouth and nofe. They afiertr .ed, however, that the lion itfelf rifqued its life m fuch attempts, efpecialiy if any other buffalo, was at ban to refcue that which was. attacked. It was faid, that a traveller once had an opportunity of feeing a female buff o . with her calf, defended by a river at her back, keep tor a long time a t hay five lions which had partly furrounded her, but did not (at leaft as long as the traveller looked on) .dare to attack her. I have been informed from very good authority, that on a plain to the eaff o f Kromme-nvier, a lion had been gored and trampled to death by a herd of cattle; having, urged probably by hunger, ventured to attack them in broad day-light. This the reader will, perhaps, not fo much wonder at, when he is told, that in the day-time, and upon an open -plain, twelve or fixteen d o g s will eafily get the better o f a large lion. There is no necefiity for the dogs, with which the lion is to be hunted, to be very large and trained up to the fiport, as M. Buffon thinks they ihould be, the bufinefs being perfeitly well accomplilhed with the common fqrmhoufe dogs. When thefe have got pretty near the lion, the latter, from a greatnefs of foul, does not offer to fly any farther, but fits himfelf down. The hounds then furround him, and, ruihing on him all at once, are thus, with their united ftrength, able to tear in pieces, almolt in an inftant, the ftrongeft of all wild beafts. It is faid, that he has feldom time to give more than two or three flight ftrokes with his paws, (each of which ftrokes is 6 • inftant inftant death) to an equal number of his affailants. M. d e B u f f o n afferts alfo, that the lion may be hunted on horfe- back, but that the horfes as well as the dogs muft be trained to i t : this is probably a mere conjeiture of that ingenious, author, as he does not mention his informers on this point. In Africa, the colonifts hunt the lion with common hunting horfes ; indeed, I do not know how they could eafily be able to get horfes trained up only to the chafe o f the lion. It is faid, that horfes in battle, or in other dangerous enterprizes, fuffer themfelves more willingly to be capari- foned by their riders than at other times; a circumftance which I think I have likewife remarked in thefe animals, on expeditions, where the danger, indeed, was not fo great, as in hunting the buffalo and rhinoceros, when they have paffed rivers, and gone up and down fteep places and precipices with the greateft alacrity. Our horfes, the very fame as had feveral times, in the manner above-mentioned, ihewn their difquietude when the lion happened to be in the vicinity o f them, and which were not in the leaft trained to the chafe, once exhibited a fpirit in the purfuit of two large lions, equal to that which they had ihewn at other times in chafing the timid gazels. Though, in fait, hunting horfes feem to partake much more o f their matter's pieafure in the chafe: I remember in particular, at Agter Bruntjes Hoogte, I rode a horfe which, by a tremulous found iffuing from its cheft, cocking up its ears, and prancing and capering, difcovered, in an unequivocal manner, its ardour for the chafe, whenever it came in fight o f the larger kind of game, > There have even been inftances of hunting horfes, who, when the. hunter has jumped off Vox.. II, i their
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