178 ON SAFARI 



west, without seeing anything beyond the usual game 

 — a few zebras, ostriches, gazelles, and some klipspringers 

 on the crags — when about ten o'clock we sat down 

 beneath a mimosa and sent our gun-bearers over the 

 rocky range on the west to investigate what lay beyond. 

 Presently to us smoking in the shade they reported 

 three rhinos in the valley beyond, and having scaled this 

 ridge w^e verified the fact for ourselves, the rhinos looking 

 absolutely pure white (owing to the calcareous mud they 

 had last w^allowed in). They were a couple of miles 

 away, down the wdnd, and moving further in that 

 direction — involving a long detour. The wind, more- 

 over, was shifty and treacherous, so that many changes 

 in tactics became necessary before we gained a command- 

 ing position. 



The scene of operations was a flat-floored valley two 

 miles across, walled-in by low abrupt hills and over- 

 grown with thin open forest, mostly thorns. Beneath 

 a group of these — shady, flat-topped mimosas — two of 

 the rhinos had, during our long manoeuvres with the 

 wind, drawn up to spend their midday siesta. The 

 third we could not see, but knew he was in the bush 

 somewhere near by. 



The feature of this stalk was the extraordinary 

 callousness to threatening danger, and its manifold signs, 

 displayed by those two great pachyderms. Owing to 

 the constantly-varying wind, pufl's of which came from 

 opposite airts within a few seconds of each other, we had 

 twice unwittingly given alarm to some groups of liarte- 

 beests and gazelles ^ that happened to fall under our lee. 

 On one of tliese occasions several antelopes galloped past 

 within a comparatively short distance of the sleepy mon- 

 sters, but without arousing their suspicion. Then, during 

 the final approach, when we were already close in, a band 

 of shrieking plovers [Stephanihyx onelanoi^terus) — the 



^ These gazelles were all G. grant i, except a single example of 

 G. thomsoni — the only one seen at Solai, which cle;u-ly lies north 

 of their range, though they aie abundant a dozen miles to the 

 southward. 



