The half-eaten remains of the unfortunate man were recovered the next day nearly a mile away from the railway carriage in which he had met his death; but the lion was nowhere to be found, and in spite of a large reward offered for its destruction, it was some time before this bold and dangerous beast was disposed of. At last, however, it was caught alive in a big cage-trap made by a Mr. Costello, who at that time was the station-master at Makindu, on the Uganda Railway. After having been photographed, this lion was shot. This photograph was shown me by Mr. Costello himself, who told me that the captured animal was old and mangy, with very worn teeth and claws, and a short, scrubby mane. He thought that there could be no reasonable doubt that it was the lion that had killed poor Mr. Ryall, but of course nobody can be absolutely certain on this point. Natives living in very small communities, in wild districts where game being still abundant, lions also are consequently fairly numerous, are often troubled at night by these animals. In such cases a man-eating lion usually proves to be an old and almost worn-out beast, which having grown too weak to catch and kill its usual prey, has been driven by hunger to approach the haunts of men. Urged on by its desperate need, such a lion knows no fear, and will not hesitate to enter a small native village or even to force its way into a hut in search of food. In 1879, whilst hunting elephants in the country to the east of the Chobi or Quito river, I met with a very primitive tribe of natives living in families or very small communities in isolated villages along the bank of the river. Their huts were of the flimsiest description, being formed of a light framework of poles, over which a few grass mats had been stretched; but the two or three, up to half a dozen, ill-made huts which formed each village were always surrounded and protected by a carefully made stockade, the poles forming which were all sharpened at the end and hardened by having been charred in the fire, and so placed that they slanted outwards and would have been very difficult to surmount from the outside. The natives informed me that they had taken this trouble as a defence against lions. [Illustration: "HE HAD EVIDENTLY BEEN SITTING OR LYING BY A FIRE WHEN CAUGHT."] One morning, in this same district, I came upon most of the skeleton of a man who had been killed and eaten by a lion a few days before. He had evidently been sitting or lying by a fire when caught, and had probably been overtaken by darkness when on his way from one village to another. This man's spears lay close to his bones, so that he must have been holding them in his hand when he was seized. None of my Kafirs would touch them. Apparently it was not etiquette to meddle with the belongings of a dead man, though I think that most of the members of my retinue would not have been above stealing anything they might have found lying about, belonging to a live one.