A RIDE THROUGH RHINO COUNTRY 309 



and over the flat green thorn trees, is surely one of the 

 strangest and most beautiful sights the animal world offers 

 to man. As he stands and dips and bends and twists his 

 nine-foot long neck in and out among the armed branches 

 of the tree, he is grace personified. I was able to watch 

 seven of these creatures, the king, his harem and his children, 

 all gathered around one green-topped tree. From seven 

 points of vantage they dipped into it at once, stooping under 

 an unusually keenly armed bough, bending over another, 

 their necks seeming to twist two or three ways at once. I 

 had the good fortune to come very near without alarming 

 them, and with my Zeiss glass, could see them as though they 

 were not more than ten yards away. But when at last the 

 treacherous breeze betrayed us, and they plunged into flight! 

 well, no one could call their movements graceful. The 

 immensely long forelegs are thrown forward, as you see a 

 very high-stepping horse sometimes throw his forelegs for- 

 ward, till the hoof, for the faction of a second is pointed 

 straight out in front. The giraffe makes this motion with 

 a sort of jerk at the end of it, as though he intended in the 

 first instance to fling his hoof as far as he could forward, and 

 then as a sort of afterthought brings it to the ground, then 

 when it reaches earth he flounders forward with his high 

 shoulders, lifts both ungainly hindlegs and plants them 

 almost together. There is a great antediluvian lizard 

 known to us, who had two brains, one to move his body 

 and another to move his abnormally long tail. It looks 

 as though this giraffe, like the long lizard, also needed 

 two brains, one to move his hind legs and another to move 

 his forelegs, and as though the two brains wouldn't act 

 perfectly together. 



And now, coming back toward the river, camp is near. 

 Is it possible that this upper country looking so fresh, so 

 green, so shady, the streams running clear as in the hills of 

 Ireland and Scotland, lies within twenty-five miles of the 



