“I was eight days in coming here from the place where I last broke down, and had few incidents on the road. Van Roozen, the Dutchman, however, got a fright one morning from a couple of lions, and showed himself to be rather a coward. We were entering the dry bed of the Motloutsi River about two hours before sunrise, and I was asleep in the waggon. It appears that Van Roozen had gone across the river in front of the waggons to ascertain the nature of the opposite bank, which he had just climbed when the roar of a lion resounded in his ears, and he asserts that he was chased by a couple of them, and ‘ran like a horse.’ The latter part of his statement, no doubt, is perfectly correct, and also it was true that there had been two lions within a yard or two of him at one time, as we saw by the spoor at sunrise. I found the remains of a pallah they had killed in the bed of the river, and the spoor of the lions going away into the bush, and set off to follow it with the dogs and the Dutchman. The latter was in a great fright. I should have thought nothing of it if he had candidly admitted as much, but he thought to put me off by making believe to follow the spoor, and then conveniently losing it. The Kafirs too are most terribly afraid of lions, and will always lose the spoor; indeed it is almost useless to attempt to follow it with them, but I had thought better things of a Dutchman calling himself a ‘hunter.’ The fact is, for one man to go alone, or only accompanied by Kafirs, may be dangerous, but for two white men with double-barrelled rifles the danger is very slight; as, in the remote contingency of an attack, one could help the other, but really Dutchmen are only a degree better than Kafirs. Still they are wonderfully useful about a waggon, and my having this one with me takes a great deal of bother off my hands, and may save me no end of trouble and delay. My grand mistake was not taking a good man with me from Natal in the first instance at £8 or £10 a month.