But a lion-hunt each single time is an affair of perfect harmony, of deep, burning, mutual desire and reverence between two truthful and undaunted creatures, on the same wavelength. A lion on the plain bears a greater likeness to ancient monumental stone lions than to the lion which today you see in a zoo; the sight of him goes straight to the heart. Dante cannot have been more deeply amazed and moved at the first sight of Beatrice in a street of Florence. Gazing back into the past I do, I believe, remember each individual lion I have seen – his coming into the picture, his slow raising or rapid turning of the head, the strange, snakelike swaying of his tail. ‘Praise be to thee, Lord, for Brother Lion, the which is very calm, with mighty paws, and flows through the flowing grass, red-mouthed, silent, with the roar of the thunder ready in his chest.’ And he himself, catching sight of me, may have been struck, somewhere under his royal mane, by the ring of a similar Te Deum: ‘Praise be to thee, Lord, for my sister of Europe, who is young, and has come out to me on the plain in the night.’

In old days the lion was likely to come out of the matter triumphant. Later we have got such effective weapons that the test of strength can hardly be called fair – still I have had more than one friend killed by lions. Nowadays great sportsmen hunt with cameras. The practice started while I was still in Africa; Denys as a white hunter took out millionaires from many countries, and they brought back magnificent pictures, the which however to my mind (because I do not see eye to eye with the camera) bore less real likeness to their object than the chalk portraits drawn up on the kitchen door by our Native porters. It is a more refined sport than shooting, and provided you can make the lion join into the spirit of it you may here, at the end of a pleasant, platonic affair, without bloodshed on either side, blow one another a kiss and part like civilized beings. I have no real knowledge of the art; I was a fairly good shot with a rifle, but I cannot photograph.