A RIDE “FHROUGH RHINO COUNTRY — 307 
Here, as I said, it is the unexpected that happens. Sud- 
denly we come on two rhinos feeding among the brush. 
As we climb a ridge we are close to them before either party 
is aware of the other. I have been scribbling notes as I 
ride, but the note-book is now hurriedly pocketed. Ugly 
brutes these rhinos surely are, and dangerous as they are 
ugly. Now a sporting license issued by the Government of 
the Protectorate only permits the holder to kill two rhinos. 
Personally I think this a mistake. All rhinos should be 
shot at sight. They are a common nuisance, too common 
hereabout; useless for food, and especially dangerous to 
unarmed people. The natives dread them. I have in 
another part of the country already taken half my allowance 
of rhinos, and as neither of these has the one redeeming 
feature allowed to a rhino, a good horn, they are safe so far 
as I am concerned; so there is nothing to be done but to 
go around them, which I do, my syce with the memory of the 
buffalo column still in his soul, crowding up close on the 
guns with the led mule. As we make a circle we draw off 
to one side and pass close to a winding water-course, dry in 
the hot weather, but holding running-water now, which 
gurgles among tall grass and thorn bushes, its sides rocky 
and steep. A little ridge runs from the hill we had to turn 
down, in order to go around the rhino, to the edge of the 
water course, and shuts off our view of a sharp bend in its 
stream. The gulley makes another bend to meet this ridge, 
so, as our heads rise above it, there lies a little tongue- 
shaped promontory before us, and we stand on high ground 
atitscentre. A few yards away is a whole family of ostriches, 
cock bird and hen and eight half-grown chicks (the chicks 
would stand over five feet high). For a moment dire con- 
fusion reigns, for the ostrich is exceedingly wary, and when 
the old birds have a brood they are the very most careful of 
all wild creatures; and if the Syrian ostriches, as the Good 
Book says, left their eggs to take their chances in the sand, 
