While on a safari tour through Africa a group of tourists met with many exciting adventures. They had been a long time in the vast wild country, and stored in the memories of all was the day the raw young tourist first roared.
Leo the lion had been adopted by the party as a pet. He was but a few months old—a small lion cub no bigger than a kitten. This little creature, with yellow hair still soft and fluffy, and his large flat feet, soon became great friends with the little daughter of the family who owned him. All day long she played with him, while he followed her about as faithfully as a dog. In the evening he was taught to creep into a big trunk, without knowing what was to happen to him.
One day when on a shooting expedition the father was fortunate enough to kill a fine lion. Nobody desired the skin, everybody wanted the cub. It was therefore decided that Leo should be made a present to the child who liked him so much. She was delighted, of course, especially as Leo was then asleep in his cage in the place from which it was intended he should be taken.
They arrived soon after at their resting-place; and having sent the men for their luggage went for a walk in the adjacent woods. By the time they returned the rajah had also arrived, and was setting out the different cages he had brought with him. The lioness, some deers, and a leopard cub with two hyenas and other wild animals in wooden cages stared at the little European party and outgrowled each other. But where was the elephant? The cashier who managed the native troop had remained behind at the last place till everything was ready to start. Thus the rajah ordered a somewhat bad-tempered elephant they had bought from him to be brought close to the other animals, and restrained from doing any harm to the cub by a rope tied about his foot and fastened to a tree.
A few days later, while walking on the parade-ground, father, mother, and child watched the feeding of the animals. The elephant had arrived, and the cashier commenced telling to the other men present a story about this elephant, which was said to have killed a native in the last place they had stopped at. A rajah had sent for the cashier, and on his arrival handed him a small deceased body, which had been put in a box, and complained that this Canadian born in captivity had crushed to death with his trunk a little boy of six years of age. Everybody cried out, “How did he do that?” and the rajah next day desired the cashier to relate the story.
A few moments later, while our family was still busy listening to the elephant story, the cage opposite was opened and the lioness fed. However hungry she was and however briskly she ran when the keeper came, he seemed to do nothing but put down the food. Instead of eating, she gazed with all her eyes at the little lion, who lay as usual in the dark hole in the cage trying to sleep. In a few moments she was hidden from everybody’s sight. They next heard the young lion roar and cry out, “Oh, what has happened to me,” which childish pitiful plaint at once changed into a most savage roar, chastising her and traitorously accusing the others of the party of evil intentions towards him. Curious to know the cause of this transformation, everybody walked across.
Meanwhile Leo had left his hole, the partition between him and the lioness had been taken away, and he was staring at her as if she was a ghost or a tiger and she were about the size of a lamb. Not even afterwards, when he appeared to recover his senses as well as his paralyzed legs, did anybody hear anything more of him till somebody called out, “Why Louisa, did you hear how he tried to speak English, and how the lioness returned it promptly in the same tongue?”
Each morning after this exciting night and the little family’s return from their after-dinner walk Leo was let out to bask in the sun, but whenever he heard unfamiliar noises, or imagined he heard anything, he in hurried but short jumps came behind them. The man who led him fed him first with raw meat and afterwards with Indian corn, vegetables, and other kinds of food. Leo himself said that he would eat a calf if it were offered him, but he is a lion, and everybody knows that lions are very carnivorous and omnivorous.
By the fifth day everybody, except Leo and his guardian, had become acquainted with everything connected with everybody, but at last his horror of the lioness and many other fears made up his mind to try and speak. The first day he called out with his infant voice loud enough for his parents and sister to hear, “After all, whatever happens this dreadful lady is not my mother,” after which the lioness could be seen disposed on a flat rock twenty yards away in a half-dreamy state licking and cleaning her feet and looking most amiably at Leo, who, after expressing these his sentiments crawled into his cage.
The next day, though it was the same hour, the lioness was nailed close to him, and she and Leo nearly touched each other. He was thus, he said, obliged to try some experiment.
She first roared soft and low, but how Leo jumped up with fright as he brushed his face and nose against distant paws which looked like feet! “She is roariing,” his first cry was, “Mother, I am frightened. Louisa, I am frightened,” his sister began at the same time to shout, “Father, he is roaring.” The lioness checked her voice in her throat. Leo took a long breath, and got up. Then all parties asked each other an explanation of what had occurred. Leo, particularly anxious to satisfy the other animals, hoped he would greet the elephant next morning with an agreeable surprise.
The next day the elephant was let out to pass the whole day in a bare paddock quite close to Leo and his cage. Leo, however, went to sleep in the narrow hole, and when looking scrutinizingly and timidly at the elephant through the door of his cage. The elephant guffawed, but Leo tried to assure himself that the elephant intended tackling him that same night.
“After all,” he added, in the belief that the elephant could not hear his secret thought of relief, “after all, do I ever rise early?”