482 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



Here in the Lado we were in a wild, uninhabited coun- 

 try, and for meat we depended entirely on our rifles; nor 

 was there any difficulty in obtaining all we needed. We 

 only shot for meat, or for museum specimens all the 

 museum specimens being used for food too and as the 

 naturalists were as busy as they well could be, we found 

 that, except when we were after rhinoceros, it was not 

 necessary to hunt for more than half a day or thereabouts. 

 On one of these hunts, on which he shot a couple of buck, 

 Kermit also killed a monitor lizard, and a crocodile ten 

 feet long; it was a female, and contained fifty-two eggs, 

 which, when scrambled, we ate and found good. 



The morning after Kermit killed his cow rhino he and 

 Grogan went off for the day to see if they could not get 

 some live rhino photos. Cuninghame started to join Heller 

 at the temporary camp which we had made beside the 

 dead rhino, in order to help him with the skin and skeletons. 

 Mearns and Loring were busy with birds, small beasts, 

 and photographs. So, as we were out of fresh meat, I 

 walked away from camp to get some, followed by my gun- 

 bearers, the little mule with its well-meaning and utterly 

 ignorant shenzi sais, and a dozen porters. 



We first went along the river brink to look for croco- 

 diles. In most places the bank was high and steep. Wher- 

 ever it was broken there was a drinking-place, with lead- 

 ing down to it trails deeply rutted in the soil by the herds of 

 giant game that had travelled them for untold years. At 

 this point the Nile was miles wide, and was divided into 

 curving channels which here and there spread into lake- 

 like expanses of still water. Along the edges of the river 

 and between the winding channels and lagoons grew vast 

 water-fields of papyrus, their sheets and bands of dark 

 green breaking the burnished silver of the sunlit waters. 

 Beyond the further bank rose steep, sharply peaked hills. 

 The tricolored fish eagles, striking to the eye because of 

 their snow-white heads and breasts, screamed continually, 

 a wild eerie sound. Cormorants and snake birds were 



