Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1908-10-30
Ll0NSTURN MAN EATERS
HUNGER DRIVES THEM TO PREY ON
AFRICAN NATIVES.
scourge in British Colony of Nyasaland
Due to Scarcity of Game-Whole
Villages Deserted.

A new terror has befallen some of the
districts of Nyasaland, the British coloay
lying along the western shore of Lake
|Nyasa. In this region game has never
been plentiful and the supply has been
still further depleted by excessive hunt
ing in the last few years. The result is
that the natural food of lions is becoming
scarce and they have been driven by
hunger TO prey upon the natives
Fortunately lions are not so numerous
there as they are in British East Africa.
But the natives are i'll terror, owing to
the fact that the animals now look upon
them as an excellent source of food sup
ply. The evil at present is greatest in
the district which lies between the gov
ernment stations of Ngara and Dowa III
the high country west of Lake NyaFa.
In this locality during the last year
the lions have become a scourge. These
natives have surrounded all their viii
lagos with stockades at least 10 feet
high, the tops of which are thickly WOW
len with thorns
These precautions seems to afford no
security. Lions have repeatedly climbed
over the stockades, broken into the huts
usually by tearing away the roof thateh
and carried off natives. Even those not
attacked are usually 700 terror stricken
to offer resistance.
A party of whites travelling through
this region in May last observed many
small villages deserted by their inhabi-
tants, although the huts were still quite
new On asking the reason the answer
was invariably the same:
The people could no longer remain.
The lions have become so bad that we
are all afraid we will be killed"
At one village three women had been
Killed and eaten by these animals; at
another, a man and two girls, and SO on.
The lions that are committing these
ravages are believed to have been driven
to prey upon human beings only by hun
ger, for man-eating lions have not often
terrorized this region. Most lions are
not the ferocious beasts they have been
thought to be.
They run off into the jungle at the
sight of a human being and never at
tack a man unless wounded or hunted.
But with the man-eating lion it is differ
eflt.
He lies in hiding all day. and at night
fires, guns and noise will not keep him
off. He springs into a group of natives
and carries one off before the others
have time to make resistance
lie enters tents without fear, clawing
away the fastenings. When the man
eaters attacked the lab0rers on the
Uganda railroad every body built plat
forms and slept on them at least twenty
feet from the ground.
All that is necessary to turn an ordi-
nary lion into one of the man-eating sort
is for him to acquire a taste for human
flesh. He may first feed on the remains
of a human body that man-eater has
left and as soon as he learns that the
human kind is easy to kill he is likely
to attack men, women or children in
preference TO any of the game that has
been his food. Then he becomes a man
eater. a terrible evil.
This is the gravest feature in the pres
emit situation in Nyasaland. The lions
are being turned into man-eaters. OF
course this state of affairs has melted
the colonial authorities to make every
effort to destroy the lions.