A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



tenderloin of the rhino in the form of Hamburger steak. Each 

 of the porters loaded as much of the meat as he could carry, in 

 addition to his sixty-pound pack, and when in camp would eat 

 what he could, and dry the remainder if no more edible game 

 was killed in the mean time. If a few maggots collected in the 

 meat in the process of drying, this fact did not affect the ap- 

 petite of the unprejudiced Swahili. The slabs of thick skin 

 cut from the back of the dead rhino would later be cut into 

 thin strips by the men and stretched in camp, to be afterward 

 whittled into raw^hide walking-sticks and whips, or kibokos. 

 The kiboko, which is the instrument of punishment on safari, 

 derives its name from the fact that it is the Swahili word for 

 hippopotamus, which also has an inch-thick hide like the 

 rhinoceros. 



Several months later, and several hundred miles north of this 

 country, I started one morning at daylight to explore some 

 bush-covered hills to the south of the stream on which we were 

 camped. The hot sun had already dried the high grass when 

 we reached a long, yellow plain winding through dense, green 

 thorn-bush. When part way across this the gun-bearer 

 whistled softly. Turning to the right and following the direc- 

 tion of his gaze, I saw two familiar bulky masses, three hundred 

 yards distant, feeding parallel to our course. By the aid of the 

 glasses, I judged that these two rhinos were a bull and cow, 

 both with fair sets of horns, and feeding across the plain, one 

 behind the other, forty yards apart. These beasts inhabited a 

 red-clay country, and instead of the natural slate-gray color of 

 rhinos in portions of the country, were quite red, owing to a 

 coating of dried red mud, in which they had been wallowing 

 to rid themselves of ticks. As we were not far from camp, 

 and this seemed a favorable place to kill a rhino, I took the 

 heavy rifle from Myzzio, and, sheltered by a patch of thorn- 

 bushes, approached the feeding animals. My followers im- 

 mediately climbed into the upper branches of some tall, dead 



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