Where game is abundant, there you may expect lions in proportionately large numbers.  They are never seen in herds, but six or eight, probably one family, occasionally hunt together.  One is in much more danger of being run over when walking in the streets of London, than he is of being devoured by lions in Africa, unless engaged in hunting the animal.  Indeed, nothing that I have seen or heard about lions would constitute a barrier in the way of men of ordinary courage and enterprise.

The same feeling which has induced the modern painter to caricature the lion, has led the sentimentalist to consider the lion’s roar the most terrific of all earthly sounds.  We hear of the “majestic roar of the king of beasts.”  It is, indeed, well calculated to inspire fear if you hear it in combination with the tremendously loud thunder of that country, on a night so pitchy dark that every flash of the intensely vivid lightning leaves you with the impression of stone-blindness, while the rain pours down so fast that your fire goes out, leaving you without the protection of even a tree, or the chance of your gun going off.  But when you are in a comfortable house or wagon, the case is very different, and you hear the roar of the lion without any awe or alarm.  The silly ostrich makes a noise as loud, yet he never was feared by man.  To talk of the majestic roar of the lion is mere majestic twaddle.  On my mentioning this fact some years ago, the assertion was doubted, so I have been careful ever since to inquire the opinions of Europeans, who have heard both, if they could detect any difference between the roar of a lion and that of an ostrich; the invariable answer was, that they could not when the animal was at any distance.  The natives assert that they can detect a variation between the commencement of the noise of each.  There is, it must be admitted, considerable difference between the singing noise of a lion when full, and his deep, gruff growl when hungry.  In general the lion’s voice seems to come deeper from the chest than that of the ostrich, but to this day I can distinguish between them with certainty only by knowing that the ostrich roars by day and the lion by night.

The African lion is of a tawny color, like that of some mastiffs.  The mane in the male is large, and gives the idea of great power.  In some lions the ends of the hair of the mane are black; these go by the name of black-maned lions, though as a whole all look of the yellow tawny color.  At the time of the discovery of the lake, Messrs. Oswell and Wilson shot two specimens of another variety.  One was an old lion, whose teeth were mere stumps, and his claws worn quite blunt; the other was full grown, in the prime of life, with white, perfect teeth; both were entirely destitute of mane.  The lions in the country near the lake give tongue less than those further south.  We scarcely ever heard them roar at all.