242 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



thick and battered, its knees bare and calloused from its 

 habit of going down on them when righting or threatening 

 fight. 



On our march northward, we first made a long day's 

 journey to what was called a salt marsh. An hour or two 

 after starting we had a characteristic experience with a 

 rhino. It was a bull, with poor horns, standing in a plain 

 which was dotted by a few straggling thorn-trees and wild 

 olives. The safari's course would have taken it to windward 

 of the rhino, which then might have charged in sheer irri- 

 table bewilderment; so we turned off at right angles. The 

 long line of porters passed him two hundred yards away, 

 while we gun men stood between with our rifles ready; 

 except Kermit, who was busy taking photos. The rhino 

 saw us, but apparently indistinctly. He made little dashes 

 to and fro, and finally stood looking at us, with his big 

 ears cocked forward; but he did nothing more, and we left 

 him standing, plunged in meditation probably it would 

 be more accurate, to say, thinking of absolutely nothing, 

 as if he had been a huge turtle. After leaving him we 

 also passed by files of zebra and topi who gazed at us, 

 intent and curious, within two hundred yards, until we had 

 gone by and the danger was over; whereupon they fled 

 in fright. 



The so-called salt marsh consisted of a dry watercourse, 

 with here and there a deep muddy pool. The ground 

 was impregnated with some saline substance, and the 

 game licked it, as well as coming to water. Our camp 

 was near two reedy pools, in which there were big yellow- 

 billed ducks, while queer brown herons, the hammerhead, 

 had built big nests of sticks in the tall acacias. Bush cuckoos 

 gurgled in the underbrush by night and day. Brilliant roll- 

 ers flitted through the trees. There was much sweet bird 

 music in the morning. Funny little elephant shrews with 

 long snouts, and pretty zebra mice, evidently of diurnal 

 habit, scampered among the bushes or scuttled into their 

 burrows. Tiny dikdiks, antelopes no bigger than hares, 



