46 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



and went, no other man to interfere with your preserves, the 

 world all to yourself and your beastly companions ! How 

 they would fight, and wallow, and roar, and how very cunning 

 you would have to be to escape being eaten ! I am afraid in 

 my dreams two or three large-bored, hard-hitting guns have 

 figured as desiderata ; indeed, under such circumstances, I 

 should not see the fun of doing king with a celt for a sceptre 

 and half a dozen flint-headed arrows as a standing armament. 



The rhinoceros would be even easier of approach than he 

 is were it not for his attendant bird, a black slim-built fellow 

 very like the king crow of India, who, in return I take it for 

 his food, the parasitic insects on the chukuru, watches over 

 his fat friend and warns him of the coming danger by springing 

 up in the air and alighting smartly again with a peck on his 

 back or head. This puts him on the alert, and he does his best, 

 by sniffing and listening, to find out the point from which 

 he is threatened, for his ears are quick and his scent excellent ; 

 but, as you are below wind of him, sound and smell travel badly, 

 and his vision is by no means first rate. The natives by a 

 figure transfer the connection between the bird and the beast 

 to themselves, and when they wish to emphasise the great 

 affection they bear you, or the great care they intend to take 

 of you, address you as ' my rhinoceros,' an elliptical expres- 

 sion by which they mean to convey that they are your guardian 

 birds. They are not always quite unfailing. Going out from 

 Kolobeng after elephants I had heard of in the neighbourhood, 

 I passed an old rain-doctor, whom I knew well, making rain 

 with his pot on the fire, and his herbs and charms on the 

 bubble. 'Chukuru ami, where are you going?' he asked. 

 { To shoot elephants,' I replied. ' I was just making rain, 

 but as you are my chukuru, I put it off till to-morrow.' Is it 

 necessary to say I was wet through in half an hour? A fine- 

 heavy thunderstorm was brewing whilst he was boiling. This 

 rain-making is the Kafir's pet superstition the power is 

 hereditary believed in by the maker and his fellow-country- 

 men. Conditions difficult to keep are imposed, such as that 



