not mean that they inhabit them continuously. They roam about, following the movements of the game. If they happen to be working in a country where there is a cave, they will use it while in the neighbourhood. But a given band of lions usually stays in one place only a short time. The phrase "band of lions" is perhaps not very accurate. Lions go in all kinds of combinations of numbers. There is a cave on the MacMillan ranch near Nairobi from which sixteen lions have been seen to come. Personally I have never seen more than eight lions together, but I have seen almost all combinations of numbers, ages, and sexes below that number. Lions are more often in twos, threes, or fours than in other combinations.
But although I know that lions are accustomed to roam after game, one of the most interesting lion encounters I ever had came from acting on exactly the opposite theory.
There is a place where a little stream flows into the Theba River, where, in 1906, I was looking for buffalo and heard the snarling of two lions. We stopped the buffalo hunt momentarily to locate the lions. We started at the river bank to drive up the small stream toward the higher land and the open. The beaters began their work with their usual noises, which I checked as soon as possible for fear that the lions would go out too far ahead of us to get a shot. I instructed the beaters to go up the little stream with the cover along its banks throwing stones in ahead of them. But my precautions were too late. They had hardly started to work when I noticed on the hills
