410 RHINOCEEOS OF THE LADO [ch. xiv 



and Grogan went off for the clay to see if they could 

 not get some live rhino photos. Cuninghame started 

 to join Heller at the temporary camp which we had 

 made beside the dead rhino, in order to help him with 

 the skin and skeletons. Mearns and Loring were busy 

 with birds, small beasts, and photographs. So, as we 

 were out of fresh meat, I walked away from camp to 

 get some, followed by my gun-bearers, the little mule 

 M'ith its well-meaning and utterly ignorant shenzi sais, 

 and a dozen porters. 



We first went along the river l^rink to look for 

 crocodiles. In most places the bank was high and 

 steep. Wherever it was broken there was a drinking 

 place, with leading down to it trails deeply rutted in 

 the soil by the herds of giant game that had travelled 

 them for untold years. At this point the Nile was 

 miles wide, and was divided into curving channels which 

 here and there spread into lake-hke expanses of still 

 water. Along the edges of the river, and between the 

 winding channels and lagoons, grew vast water-fields of 

 papyrus, their sheets and bands of dark green breaking 

 the burnished silver of the sunlit waters. Beyond the 

 farther bank rose steep, sharply peaked hills. The tri- 

 coloin-ed fish eagles, striking to the eye because of their 

 snow-white heads and breasts, screamed continually — 

 a wild, eerie sound. Cormorants and snake-birds were 

 perched on trees o\'erlianging the water, and flew away, 

 or plunged Hke stones into the stream, as I approached ; 

 herons of many kinds rose from the marshy edges of the 

 bays and inlets ; wattled and spur- winged plovers circled 

 overhead ; and I saw a party of hippopotami in a shallow 

 on the other side of the nearest charmel, their lazy bulks 

 raised above water as they basked asleep in the sun. 

 The semi-diurnal slate-and-yellow bats flitted from one 



