148 SAFARI 



full, we slept well, only to be awakened about mid- 

 night by that chorus of snorts which always betrays 

 the rhino. There, just beyond our makeshift boma, 

 two rhinos were at it, snout to snout, quarreling over 

 some fat-rimiped dark leather-covered belle who 

 stood watching the proceedings. Like the baboons 

 in otir forest, who are constantly threatening and 

 pursuing each other, but rarely coming to actual 

 fisticuffs, they did not give us a run for our money. 

 They kept circling about, made limibering sorties at 

 each other; stood, heads lowered, tails in air, snorting 

 away, and pawing the ground like enraged bulls ; then 

 seemed to kiss and make up. Possibly the presence 

 of imseen white men acted on their subconscious 

 minds, taking the fight out of them; or else they were 

 staging a sham battle for owe entertainment as we lay 

 there in the moonlight. At any rate, that was the 

 end of the affair. The peculiar thing about their 

 exit was that they left the trail and gave oiu* camou- 

 flaged blinds a wide berth though the wind was all 

 right. On the way they met two other rhinos com- 

 ing in, conversed with them a moment, snout to 

 snout, and then the two newcomers repeated the 

 same maneuver, leaving the trail so as to avoid 

 our concealed cameras. Evidently they had been 

 warned by the others that there was a queer looking 

 structure down there by the water. 



Next morning I went out alone with the boys as 



