In Maneaters and Marauders, Taylor describes his adventures when hunting down man-eaters and marauders, whether they be lions, crocodiles, or elephants. This is, possibly, John Taylor's most interesting book, for it contains the cumulation of all the dangerous big game Taylor met during his thirty-five years as an ivory hunter. During that time, while living in Nyasaland and Mozambique, Taylor quite often received an SOS from the natives to cull a man-eating cat or a rogue pachyderm. In one instance Taylor dispatched, in the time span of a few weeks, a pride of eleven lions that had terrorized an entire district. Some of these man-eating lions were so frightful that the natives gave them specific names, such as the Benga Man-eaters, the Maiembi Man-eaters, and the Nsungu Man-eaters. As Taylor himself noted, "Those who have not lived among the natives of East and Southern Africa can have no conception of how numerous man-eating lions are in some areas." As if the man-eating cats were not bad enough, there are also stories of bad-actor buffaloes and elephants that raided native crops or trampled a hapless individual or two. John "Pondoro" Taylor was a born raconteur, and the colorful descriptions of his hunts will bring you face to face with some of the most ferocious killers of the African bush.
