I had not gone very far when I came across a big bay scooped out of a bank by a stream when in flood and carpeted with a deposit of fine, soft sand, in which were indistinct tracks of numberless animals. In one corner of this bay, close under an overhanging tree, stood a little sandy hillock, and on looking over the top of this I saw on the other side a fearsome looking cave which seemed to run back for a considerable distance under the rocky bank. Round the entrance and inside the cavern I was thunderstruck to find a number of human bones, with here and there, a copper bangle such as the natives wear. Beyond all doubt, the maneaters den! In this manner and quite by accident, I stumbled upon the lair of these once-dreaded “demons”, which I had spent so many days searching for through the exasperating and interminable jungle during the time when they terrorised Tsavo (Patterson 1907:155). The Colonel proposed that the lions had used this cave as a hideout and den from where they unleashed their 9-month reign of terror. In early 1996 a team of scientists from the Field Museum, in collaboration with their counterparts at the Kenya Wildlife Service, KWS, began searching for the cave with the intention of excavating it to test Col. Patterson’s hypothesis. The cave was eventually found on the third attempt by a team consisting of Julian Kerbis, Thomas Gnoske and Samuel Andanje and several KWS rangers in April 1997 after three separate searches. Unfortunately the bones reported by Colonel Patterson were not found. continue>> |
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