164 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



and continued on our course. The day was windy and 

 cool, and the sky often overcast. Slowly we walked across 

 the stretches of brown grassland, sometimes treeless, some- 

 times scantily covered with an open growth of thorn-trees, 

 each branch armed with long spikes, needle-sharp; and 

 among the thorns here and there stood the huge cactus-like 

 euphorbias, shaped like candelabra, groups of tall aloes, 

 and gnarled wild olives of great age, with hoary trunks 

 and twisted branches. Now and then there would be a dry 

 watercourse, with flat-topped acacias bordering it, and 

 perhaps some one pool of thick greenish water. There 

 was game always in view, and about noon we sighted three 

 rhinos, a bull, a cow, and a big calf, nearly a mile ahead of 

 us. We were travelling down wind, and they scented us, 

 but did not charge, making off in a semicircle and halting 

 when abreast of us. We examined them carefully through 

 the glasses. The cow was bigger than the bull, and had 

 fair horns, but nothing extraordinary; and as we were 

 twelve miles from camp, so that Heller would have had to 

 come out for the night if we shot her, we decided to leave 

 her alone. Then our attention was attracted by seeing 

 the game all gazing in one direction, and we made out a 

 hyena; I got a shot at it, at three hundred yards, but missed. 

 Soon afterward we saw another rhino, but on approaching 

 it proved to be about two-thirds grown, with a stubby horn. 

 We did not wish to shoot it, and therefore desired to avoid 

 a charge; and so we passed three or four hundred yards to 

 leeward, trusting to its bad eyesight. Just opposite it, 

 when it was on our right, we saw another hyena on our left, 

 about as far off as the rhino. I decided to take a shot, and 

 run the chance of disturbing the rhino. So I knelt down 



