THE RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO 427 



yards. Then our shenzi guide mentioned that there were 

 other rhinos close by, and we walked off to inspect them. 

 In three hundred yards we came on them, a cow and a 

 well-grown calf. Sixty yards from them was an ant-hill 

 with little trees on it. From this we looked at them until 

 some sound or other must have made them uneasy, for up 

 they got. The young one seemed to have rather keener 

 suspicions, although no more sense, than its mother, and 

 after a while grew so restless that it persuaded the cow to go 

 off with it. But the still air gave no hint of our where- 

 abouts, and they walked straight toward us. I did not 

 wish to have to shoot one, and so when they were within 

 thirty yards we raised a shout and away they cantered, 

 heads tossing and tails twisting. 



Three hours later we saw another cow and calf. By 

 this time it was half-past three in the afternoon, arid the 

 two animals had risen from their noonday rest and were 

 grazing busily, the great clumsy heads sweeping the ground. 

 Watching them forty yards off it was some time before the 

 cow raised her head high enough for me to see that her 

 horns were not good. Then they became suspicious, and 

 the cow stood motionless for several minutes, her head 

 held low. We moved quietly back, and at last they either 

 dimly saw us, or heard us, and stood looking toward us, 

 their big ears cocked forward. At this moment we stumbled 

 on a rhino skull, bleached, but in such good preservation 

 that we knew Heller would like it; and we loaded it on the 

 porters that had followed us. All the time we were thus 

 engaged the two rhinos, only a hundred yards off, were 

 intently gazing in our direction, with foolish and bewildered 

 solemnity; and there we left them, survivors from a long 



