36 AFRICAN ADVENTURE STORIES 



In a few hours the porters had cleared away a 

 large tract of grass and were busy pitching the 

 tents in the edge of the grove. When the camp 

 was finally settled it certainly was a picturesque 

 sight. Our line of dark-green tents were some 

 fifty yards from the river; back of them was a 

 cluster of heavy drill tents belonging to the tent 

 boys and gun bearers; then came the bee-hive- 

 shaped grass huts of the porters, making in all 

 quite a respectable village, with the elephant- 

 grass, which commenced at the very back of the 

 porters' domiciles, extending in one unbroken 

 mass as far as the eye could reach. 



We remained here about three weeks and 

 made a fine collection, for the country was 

 very rich in animal life. Colonel Roosevelt and 

 Kermit had secured an exceptionally fine group 

 of white rhinoceroses, which Heller and his na- 

 tive skinners had spent days of arduous work in 

 preparing. These, by the way, aside from one or 

 two single specimens in various museums, were 

 the only ones of their kind in existence, and they, 

 together with the hundreds of birds and small 

 mammals that Doctor Mearns and I had col- 

 lected, made a collection that we valued at 

 fifty thousand dollars. 



