THE RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO 485 



emptied my magazine twice, and partly a third time, be- 

 fore I finally killed the buck and scared the mule so that it 

 started for camp. The bushbuck in this part of the Nile 

 Valley did not live in dense forest, like those of East Africa, 

 but among the scattered bushes and acacias. Those that 

 I shot in the Lado had in their stomachs leaves, twig tips, 

 and pods; one that Kermit shot, a fine buck, had been 

 eating grass also. On the Uasin Gishu, in addition to 

 leaves and a little grass, they had been feeding on the wild 

 olives. 



Our porters were not as a rule by any means the equals 

 of those we had in East Africa, and we had some trouble 

 because, as we did not know their names and faces, those 

 who wished to shirk would go off in the bushes while their 

 more willing comrades would be told off for the needed 

 work. So Cuninghame determined to make each readily 

 identifiable; and one day I found him sitting, in Rhada- 

 manthus mood, at his table before his tent, while all the 

 porters filed by, each in turn being decorated with a tag, 

 conspicuously numbered, which was hung round his neck 

 the tags, by the way, being Smithsonian label cards, 

 contributed by Dr. Mearns. 



At last Kermit succeeded in getting some good white 

 rhino pictures. He was out with his gun-bearers and Gro- 

 gan. They had hunted steadily for nearly two days with- 

 out seeing a rhino; then Kermit made out a big cow with 

 a calf lying under a large tree, on a bare plain of short grass. 

 Accompanied by Grogan, and by a gun-bearer carrying 

 his rifle, while he himself carried his "naturalist's graph- 

 lex" camera, he got up to within fifty or sixty yards of the 

 dull-witted beasts, and spent an hour cautiously manoeu- 

 vring and taking photos. He got several photos of the 

 cow and calf lying under the tree. Then something, proba- 

 bly the click of the camera, rendered them uneasy and they 

 stood up. Soon the calf lay down again, while the cow 

 continued standing on the other side of the tree, her head 

 held down, the muzzle almost touching the ground, ac- 



