The Man-Eaters of Tsavo Colonel J H Patterson

 The Man-Eaters of Tsavo

Author: Colonel J H Patterson 

Publisher: Macmillan, United Kingdom

Edition: Reprint 1996 

ISBN: 0-333-01506-1

Language: English  

Condition: Very Good. Clean copy with tight binding. 

Binding: Softcover     

Pages: 339. Print with images  

Additional Information

As part of the construction of a railway linking Uganda with the Indian Ocean at Kilindini Harbour, in March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The building site consisted of several camps spread over an area of 8 miles (13 km), accommodating the several thousand mostly Indian workers. The project was led by Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, who arrived just days before the disappearances and killings began. During the next nine months of construction, two maneless male Tsavo lions stalked the campsite, dragging workers from their tents at night, devouring them. There was an interval of several months when the attacks ceased, but word trickled in from other nearby settlements of similar lion attacks. When the lions returned the attacks intensified, with almost daily killings. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas, or thorn fences made of whistling thorn trees around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, all to no avail; the lions leaped over or crawled through the thorn fences. Patterson noted that early in their killing spree, only one lion at a time would enter the inhabited areas and seize victims, but later they became more brazen, entering together and each seizing a victim.

As the attacks mounted, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. At this point, colonial officials began to intervene. 

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