A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



streams some distance apart, which flowed down the western 

 slope of Mount Kenia. I was picking the route some distance 

 ahead of the foremost porters, whose marching-chant occasion- 

 ally drifted to me through the trees, when I noticed a slight 

 movement in the jumble of light and shade of a thicket sixty 

 yards to the right. In travelling through the bush it pays to 

 investigate anything unusual, and I immediately stopped and 

 unslung my field-glasses. After scrutinizing this object with 

 the glasses for a few moments, I realized that it was a rhinoc- 

 eros facing me between the trunks of two trees, in the midst of 

 a patch of thick but leafless dead bushes. Being armed only 

 with a light rifle, I slipped back, stopped the line of singing 

 porters, and secured the double-barrelled .450 Cordite Jeffery. 

 Armed with this, and followed by Fuguet with a similar rifle, 

 I approached the spot where I had last seen the rhino. It had 

 evidently been dozing at the time, as it was now peacefully 

 feeding through the trees away from us. By circling through 

 the acacias I succeeded in intercepting the course of the animal, 

 and waited for it to eed in my direction. 



It was very impressive to watch the slow and deliberate 

 approach of the enormous slate colored mass as it moved 

 through the waist-high yellow grass toward the small thorn- 

 tree, through the first fork of which I was resting the barrels of 

 the heavy rifle. Around the bases of many acacias flourished 

 thickets of bushes and brambles, into which the rhino would 

 push its head, and then, raising it again, would stand in the 

 same spot for several minutes with eyes, ears, jaws, and tail 

 all in motion at the same time. Then it would lower its head 

 again, and move slowly forward toward the muzzle of the 

 double-barrelled rifle in the fork of the tree. 



When about forty yards distant the great oeast slowly 

 swung around broadside, exposing the right shoulder, and at 

 the same time raising its homely head and gazing in the direc- 

 tion of some laughter among the distant camp-followers. As 



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