430 THE LAND OF THE LION 



of tracking that Gallinero had done. He had kept on 

 looking for the spoor, when we went after the rhino, and 

 had picked it up on the very border of the black and seem- 

 ingly impossible place where that cunning old warrior 

 had cached himself so effectually. 



He proved to be a very old solitary bull, with unusually 

 massive bosses to his horns. Their spread was not unusual. 

 Still, if not quite what the men called him, Koubwa Sana 

 (very big one), he was a fine trophy and in very good con- 

 dition. His horns spread just 40 inches. Along the curves, 

 which were fine and regular, he measured 6iJ, and the 

 bosses were 14!, and very massive. It was a most unusual 

 piece of luck seeing him at all, and that I owed to the very 

 fine tracking of my Wakamba. Who could have believed 

 that with all that racket round him he would still lie so 

 closely, so cunningly hidden ? Had he charged me when 

 I was struggling through the donga, right under his nose, 

 I should have been in a bad plight. I could not even have 

 fired off my rifle. I had had extraordinary bad luck with 

 buffalo up to this^very last little hunt, but on it, equally 

 good fortune attended me. I had at least "kept my fly 

 in the water." Such, sometimes, is hunting in British 

 East Africa. 



Little more remains to be said. I had longed, from 

 the time when I was little boy, to visit Africa. Two 

 lands above all others I hoped to see, two things to do. 

 I wanted to ride buffalo on our own wide beautiful prairies, 

 and I hoped against hope some day to see for myself the 

 splendid wild life of Africa at her best. There are not 

 many men alive who have ridden among the countless 

 herds of our perished bison side by side with the Red 

 Indian in the days of his glory. I suppose there is no 

 man who has seen what I saw in 1868 and who has also 

 seen what is most savage and most splendid in the African 



