294 THE GUASO NYERO [ch. xi 



bull with worn horns, and never saw me. On another 

 occasion, while we were skinning a big zebra, there were 

 three rhinoceroses, all in different places, in sight at the 

 same time. 



There were also ostriches. I saw a party of cocks, 

 with wings spread and necks curved backward, strutting 

 and dancing. Their mincing, springy run is far faster 

 than it seems when the bird is near by. The neck is 

 held back in running, and when at speed the stride is 

 twenty-one feet. No game is more wary or more diffi- 

 cult to approach. 1 killed both a cock and a hen, which 

 I found the naturalists valued even more than a cock. 

 We got them by stumbling on the nest, which con- 

 tained eleven huge eggs, and was merely a bare spot in 

 the sand, surrounded by grass two feet high. The bird 

 lay crouched, with the neck flat on the ground. When 

 we accidentally came across the nest, the cock was on 

 it, and I failed to get him as he ran. The next day we 

 returned, and dismounted before we reached the near 

 neighbourhood of the nest. Then I advanced cautiously, 

 my rifle at the ready. It seemed impossible that so 

 huge a bird could lie hidden in such scanty cover ; but 

 not a sign did we see until, when we were sixty yards 

 off', the hen, which this time was on the nest, rose, and 

 I killed her at sixty yards. Even this did not make 

 the cock desert the nest ; and on a subsequent day 1 

 returned, and after missing him badly, I killed him at 

 eighty-five yards ; and glad I was to see the huge black- 

 and-white bird tumble in the dust. He weighed two 

 hundred and sixty- three pounds and was in fine plumage. 

 The hen weighed two hundred and forty pounds. Her 

 stomach and gizzard, in addition to small, white quartz 

 pebbles, contained a mass of vegetable substance ; the 

 bright green leaves and twig tips of a shrub, a kind of 



