202 A BOOK-LOVER S HOLIDAYS 



screams of the victim before the great teeth found 

 the life they sought. The herd I watched was 

 not assailed; it cantered off; oryx and water- 

 buck came down to drink and also cantered off. 

 The carcass of the murdered zebra, little but 

 bones and shreds of red sinew and scraps of skin, 

 lay not far from me. Footprints showed where 

 the lions had drunk after eating. As the long 

 afternoon lights waned, a hyena, abroad earlier 

 than usual, began to call somewhere in the dis 

 tance. The lonely gorge was rather an eerie place 

 as darkness fell, and I strode toward camp, alone, 

 keeping a sharp lookout round about; and as I 

 walked and watched in a present that might be 

 dangerous, my thoughts went back through the 

 immeasurable ages to a past that was always 

 dangerous ; to the days when our hairy and low 

 browed forefathers, under northern skies, fingered 

 their stone-headed axes as they lay among the 

 rocks in just such a ravine as that I had quitted, 

 and gazed with mingled greed and terror as the 

 cave-lion struck down his prey and scattered the 

 herds of wild horses for whose flesh they them 

 selves hungered. 



Once in East Africa I stalked a hook-lipped 

 rhino, a big bull with good horns. I wished its 

 skin and skeleton for the Smithsonian. When a 

 hundred and fifty yards off I stopped for a mo- 



