12 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



some of us almost within touching distance. A startled rhi- 

 noceros will nearly always rush along a path in preference to 

 crashing straight through the thick jungle, differing thus from 

 the elephant, and will seldom turn except when wounded, so 

 once out of the path one is generally safe. The whole affair 

 was but of a moment, and when we had scrambled out of our 

 several hasty retreats, a hearty laugh finished the adventure, in 

 which it would have been difficult to say whether we or the 

 rhinoceros had been startled the most. From all directions 

 paths opened on to this favourite bathing resort ; the ground 

 around was as hard as iron, and the banks clean cut, and 

 polished almost where the bathers had rested and rubbed 

 their horny hides against it. 



Having thoroughly disturbed the family party at its siesta in 

 the cool water, we started back to the tent to have our mid-day 

 rest and a bath in the little stream, taking as usual one of the 

 paths made by some of our four-footed friends. A gloomy damp 

 forest it was, with thick underwood and high trees excluding the 

 sun's cheering and drying influence ; immense, apparently end- 

 less, rope-like rattans and creepers hung in festoons everywhere, 

 long beard-like silvery grey lichen, and here and there brilliantly 

 coloured and fantastically shaped orchids adorned the giant 

 stems, the only bright colour in the monotony of shades of 

 green, except when a gorgeously coloured parrakeet flashed past 

 screeching, or a more sober-coloured tree dove flew startled from 

 its hiding-place. Sometimes we met a party of laughing thrushes, 

 chuckling to themselves as if over some very good joke, never 

 quiet for one moment, perpetually bustling about from branch to 

 branch. They nearly always attend a large company of jungle 

 fowl, the ancestors of our domestic bird, under the leadership of 

 that most magnificent potentate, the jungle cock, who struts 

 about in his brilliant plumage armed with his long spurs, and 

 makes the forest echo with his defiant crow. Startled by our 

 approach, with a crowing and a cackling off they go, making for 

 the nearest bush or tree, upon the branches of which they settle, 

 but not before they have contributed their share to our larder. 

 The young birds are very good eating, the old ones will only just 

 do for soup of the thinnest nature. But we have also paid toll 

 to the inhabitants of the forest a toll collected in nothing less 

 precious than in our own life-blood, inexorably exacted, in spite 



