HUNTING ON LAKE SOLAI 173 



we crept iu, tliey might have been approached within 

 fifteen yards — though fifty would have been near 

 enouo;h. 



By way of concluding this unbroken record of 

 catastrophe, it may be added that a few weeks later I 

 was informed by the Hon. Cyril Ward that he had come 

 across, on the Molo River, a newly-killed rhinoceros 

 corresponding in description to the above, and a couple 

 of days later than the events here described. The 

 distance between the two points would be some ten or 

 twelve miles. 



During the campward march, querulous, despondent 

 thought was deflected into new channels by a curious 

 incident. Afar on the veld fluttered some white object. 

 Thinking it might be a signal placed by my brother direct- 

 ing us to a message from him — a back- veld post-oflice — 

 I rode thither. It proved to be the landmark of a new 

 farm-boundary ! Even these remote wilds were being- 

 bought up by enterprising settlers. In a few years, 

 presumptively, cattle and sheep will have displaced the 

 lion, the rhino and the eland. Such is British progress, 

 and it is rioht. At home under ''Free Trade" — be it 

 for better or for w^orse — success in pastoral or agri- 

 cultural pursuits has long been impossible ; such oc- 

 cupations were deliberately sacrificed generations ago, 

 to the interest of manufactures and cognate industries. 

 At home — so long as our islands remain the workshop 

 of the world — the artisan and mechanic may flourish : 

 the farmer and flock-master never. Whether these 

 latter can profitably be translated to equatorial uplands, 

 time and hard experience alone will show. The energy 

 and enterprise are not lacking, as this incident tends to 

 show ; but Equatoria presents problems, and perhaps 

 difliculties, which difler fundamentally from those of 

 Canada or the Antipodes. May they prove soluble ! 

 The converse a naturalist may be allowed to regret, 

 namely, that when British flock-masters shall have 

 settled-up the African veld, w^e cannot also translate 

 the displaced elephants and rhinos, the lions, antelopes 



