416 RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO [ch. xiv 



Cuiiinghame, Grogan, Heller, Kermit, and I now 

 went off on a week's safari inland, travelling as light as 

 possible. The first day's march brought us to the kraal 

 of a local chief named Sururu. There were a few 

 banana-trees and patches of scrawny cultivation round 

 the little cluster of huts, ringed with a thorn fence, 

 througli M^iich led a low door, and the natives owned 

 goats and chickens. Sururu himself wore a white sheet 

 of cotton as a toga, and he owned a red fez and a pair 

 of baggy blue breeches, which last he generally carried 

 over his shoulder. His people were very scantily clad 

 indeed, and a few of them, both men and women, wore 

 absolutely nothing except a string of blue beads around 

 the waist or neck. Their ears had not been pierced and 

 stretched like so many East African savages, but their 

 lower lips were pierced for wooden ornaments and 

 quills. They brought us eggs and chickens, which we 

 paid for with American cloth, this cloth and some 

 umbrellas constituting our stock of trade goods, or 

 gift goods, for the Nile. 



The following day Sururu himself led us to our next 

 camp, only a couple of hours away. It was a dry 

 country of harsh grass, everywhere covered by a sparse 

 growth of euphorbias and stunted thorns, which were 

 never in sufficient numbers to make a forest, each little, 

 well-nigh leafless tree, standing a dozen rods or so 

 distant from its nearest fellow. Most of the grass had 

 been burnt, and fires were still raging. Our camp was 

 by a beautiful pond, covered with white and lilac water- 

 lilies. We pitched our two tents on a bluli, under 

 some large acacias that cast real shade. It was between 

 two or three degrees north of the Equator. The moon, 

 the hot January moon of the mid-tropics, was at the 

 full, and the nights were very lovely ; the little sheet of 



