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 
