CHAP. ii. RHINOCEROS. 89 



used ;to come prowling about, and there was always the 

 charm of solitude and silence, broken only by the com- 

 panionship of wild annuals, and the many noises of a 

 tropical night, while one never knew what game to expect, 

 as, from the lion to the timid impalla, or little duiker ante- 

 lope, all came at different times to drink, and, as the night 

 is to much of the brute creation what the day is to us, 

 many a curious scene has come under my notice, increas- 

 ing my stock of natural history, while I have killed more 

 game during these solitary watches than during all my 

 other hunting put together. 



There was one particular pool at which I spent many 

 nights, sometimes when the moonlight was so bright that 

 I could see the game approaching for several hundred 

 yards, but more generally when I had only the light of 

 the stars to assist my aim, while at others, when heavy 

 thunderstorms covered the sky with black clouds, I could 

 only see when the flashes of lightning lit up the scene. 

 I found that buffalo and the larger kinds of antelopes 

 avoided the water-holes during the bright moonlight, but 

 that it made no difference to rhinoceroses and to the other 

 kinds of antelopes, in common with the smaller carnivora, 

 while the thickest of a storm was the time generally 

 chosen by the lions to make their appearance. I remember 

 once during a lull in a thunderstorm hearing the cat-like 

 lapping of one of these great beasts, and when the next 

 flash came, I saw three of them crouched flat on the bank 

 still drinking. I levelled my gun at the spot, and waiting 

 for the next flash, fired a snap-shot at the nearest, and 

 when the lightning enabled me to look again, they had 

 disappeared. I was sitting in the fork of a tree about six 



