412 KHINOCEROS OF THE LADO [ch. xiv 



far I had been shooting well ; now pride had a fall. 

 Immediately after the shot a difficulty arose in the rear 

 between the mule and the shenzi sais ; they parted 

 company, and the mule joined the shooting party in 

 front at a gallop. The bushbuck, which had halted 

 with its liead down, started off, and I trotted after it, 

 while the mule pursued an uncertain course between us, 

 and I don't know which it annoyed most. I emptied 

 my magazine twice, and partly a third time, before 1 

 finally killed the buck and scared the mule so that it 

 started for camp. The bushbuck in this part of the 

 Nile Valley did not live in dense forest, like those of 

 East Africa, but among the scattered bushes and acacias. 

 Those that I shot in the Lado had in tlieir stomaclis 

 leaves, twig-tips, and pods ; one tliat Kermit shot, a 

 fine buck, liad been eating grass also. On the Uasin 

 Gishu, in addition to leaves and a little grass, tliey had 

 been feeding on the wild olives. 



Our porters were not, as a rule, by any means the 

 equals of those we had in East Africa, and we had some 

 trouble because, as we did not know their names and 

 faces, those who wished to shirk would go off in the 

 bushes while their more willino' comrades woidd be told 

 ofi' for tlie needed work. So Cuninghame determined 

 to make each readily identifiable ; and one day I found 

 him sitting, in Rhadamanthus mood, at his table before 

 his tent, while all the porters filed by. each in turn 

 being decorated with a tag, conspicuously numbered, 

 which was hung round liis neck — the tags, by the way, 

 being Smithsonian label cards, contributed by Dr. 

 Mearns. 



At last Kermit succeeded in getting some good v/hite 

 rhino pictures. He was out with his gun-bearers and 

 Grogan. They had hunted steadily for nearly two days 



