ABSTRACT
Speaking in the House of Lords of the progress of the Uganda Railway, Lord Salisbury mentioned that among the unexpected difficulties encountered were a pair of man-eating lions, which stopped the works for three weeks, before they were shot. As some five thousand men were at work on the line, their intimidation by two lions seems almost incredible. Yet it is a fact that so dreadful was the pressure exercised by the constant attacks of this pair of man-destroying wild beasts, and so cumulative the fear caused among the Indian labourers by the sight and sound of their comrades being dragged off and devoured, that hundreds of these industrious workmen, trained on similar duties under the service of the Government of India, abandoned their employment and pay, and crying out that they agreed to work for wages, not to be food for lions or devils, rushed to the line as the trains for the coast were approaching, and flinging themselves across the metals, gave the engine-drivers the choice, either of passing over their bodies, or of stopping to take them up and carry them back to Mombasa. Many of these men were not timid Hindoos, but sturdy Sikhs. Yet the circumstances were so unique, and the scenes witnessed from week to week so bloody and appalling, that their panic and desperation are no matter for surprise. Lord Salisbury understated the facts. Though the works were stopped for three weeks, the lions’ campaign lasted, with intervals of quiet when one or other had been wounded, from March till the end of December. In this time they killed and ate twenty-eight Indians, and it is believed at least twice this number of natives, Swahilis and the like; besides wounding and attacking others. They attacked white engineers, doctors, soldiers, and military officers, armed Abyssinian askaris, sepoys, bunniahs, coolies, and porters. Some they clawed, some they devoured, some they carried off and left sticking in thorn fences, because they could not drag them through. At first they were contented to take one man between them. Before the end of their career they would take a man apiece on the same night, sometimes from the same hut or camp-fire. The plain, unvarnished tale of this “prehistoric revival” of the position originally held by man in the struggle for existence against ravenous beasts is set out at considerable length and detail in the Field of February 17th and February 24th by Mr. J. H. Patterson, one of the engineers of the line, who, after months of effort and personal risk, succeeded in breaking the spell, and killing both the lions, which the natives had come to regard as “devils,” that is, as equivalent to were-wolves, and guided by the local demons.
