A HUNTER'S CAMP-FIRES 



again meeting this animal. However, we did find them again 

 several days' journey farther up the stream. 



Early the next morning, armed with the light rifle and 

 accompanied by Myzzio with a shot-gun, I took a short- 

 cut through the bush to the Guaso Maru. We had not 

 travelled two miles until we heard two buffaloes get up in the 

 midst of the thick bush, and I cursed the luck that had made 

 me leave the heavy rifle with the caravan. For hours we fol- 

 lowed these two animals through the bush under a hot sun. 

 During the morning I had several indistinct glimpses of black 

 forms crashing through the thickets, and succeeded in wounding 

 one of these beasts twice. Early in the afternoon their tracks 

 led us down into the Guaso Nyiro, which at this point was a 

 swift, swollen, chocolate-colored stream one hundred and fifty 

 yards wide with the probability of crocodiles lurking in its 

 depths. During the chase in this stretch of bush I had almost 

 stumbled into parties of rhinos three times, and being lightly 

 armed had been obliged to sneak around these beasts before 

 again picking up the buffalo tracks. We reached camp by 

 dark, having seen many female waterbuck and impala, and a 

 large migrating band of oryx which contained over a hundred of 

 these antelopes, quite tame, and travelling in a dense column. 

 The light-colored mass of these brilliantly marked and beautiful 

 animals, topped with hundreds of long, straight, slender horns, 

 was a very striking and interesting sight. 



At daylight the next morning Fuguet and I started out 

 through the wet grass, and within an hour located our herd of 

 a dozen zebra grazing in the centre of a grassy plain. After 

 crawling in the wake of the herd for over an hour we were at 

 last discovered by one of the sentinels, and obliged to fire at 

 two hundred and fifty yards' distance. As the reports of the 

 rifles rang out the startled zebras dashed about in all directions, 

 and we hurried forward, shooting as we ran. As I passed the 

 first zebra I had fired at it was struggling on three legs with a 



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