Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1900-08-16
TWO LIONS STOP THE BUILDING
OF A RAILROAD FOR WEEKS.
EATERS
MAN
AWFUL
Twenty-Eight Coolies Are Devoured
and the Surviving Five Thousand
Go Out on a Strike-Unexpected
Difficulties Experienced at Railway
Work in Africa.

the progress OF the Uganda railway,
Lord Salisbury mentioned that among
the unexpected difficulties encount-
cred were a pair of man-eating lions,
which stopped the works for three
weeks before they were shot. AS
some 5000 men were at work on the
line, the 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 destroy
ing wild beasts, and so cumulative the
fear caused among the Indian laborers
by the sight and sound of their COM
rades being dragged off and devoured,
that hundreds of these Industrious
workmen, trained on similar duties
under the service of the government
and pay, and crying out that they
agreed to work for wages, not to be
food for lions or devils, rushed to
the lines as the trains for the coast
were approaching, and fiinging them
selves across the rails, gave the en-
ing 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
so bloody and appalling, that their
panic and desperation are no matter
for surprise.
Though the works were stopped for
three weeks, the lions campaign last
| ed, with intervals of quiet when one
or the other had been wounded, from
March to 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,
Swahisis and the like; besides wound
ing and attacking others. They at
tackled white engineers, doctors, SOL
diers and military officers, armed
| Abyssinian askaris, Sepoys, bunniahs,
coolies and porters. Some they clawed,
some they devoured, some they car
ried off and left sticking in thorn
fences, because they could not drag
them through.
AT first they were ccntented to take
one man between them. Before the
end OF their career they would take a
man apiece on the same night, some
times 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 by Mr.. ]. 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 ma
tives had come to regard as DEVILS"
that is, as equivalent to were-wolves,
and guided by the local demons.
The parallel to the story of the
lions which stopped the rebuilding of
Samaria must occur to every one, and
II the Samaritans had quarter as good
cause for their fears as had the rail-
way coolies their wish to propitiate,
the local deities is easily understood.
Lion Stories Eclipsed.
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till the last year of the nineteenth
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