THE RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO 413 



fast. A couple of hours passed. The sun was now high 

 and the heat intense as we walked over the burned ground. 

 The scattered trees bore such scanty foliage as to cast 

 hardly any shade. The rhino galloped strongly and with- 

 out faltering; but there was a good deal of blood on the 

 trail. At last, after we had gone seven or eight miles, 

 Kiboko the skinner, who was acting as my gun-bearer, 

 pointed toward a small thorn- tree; and beside it I saw the 

 rhino standing with drooping head. It had been fatally 

 hit, and if undisturbed would probably never have moved 

 from where it was standing; and we finished it off forth- 

 with. It was a cow, and before dying it ran round and 

 round in a circle, in the manner of the common rhino. 



Loring stayed to superintend the skinning and bringing 

 in of the head and feet, and slabs of hide. Meanwhile 

 Kermit and I, with our gun-bearers, went off with a "shen- 

 zi," a wild native who had just come in with the news 

 that he knew where another rhino was lying, a few miles 

 away. While bound thither we passed numbers of oribi, 

 and went close to a herd of waterbuck which stared at us 

 with stupid tameness; a single hartebeest was with them. 

 When we reached the spot there was the rhino, sure enough, 

 under a little tree, sleeping on his belly, his legs doubled 

 up, and his head flat on the ground. Unfortunately the 

 grass was long, so that it was almost impossible to photo- 

 graph him. However, Kermit tried to get his picture from 

 an ant-hill fifty yards distant, and then, Kermit with his 

 camera and I with my rifle, we walked up to within about 

 twenty yards. At this point we halted, and on the instant 

 the rhino jumped to his feet with surprising agility and 

 trotted a few yards out from under the tree. It was a huge 



