WE TRY THE FLESH OF A BABY RHINOCEROS 



23 



tliey make no attempt to charge. It is different wlien a solitary 

 bull or a pregnant cow is met with, especially if either is 

 disturbed in sleep. Later, Count Teleki came upon two bulls 

 and was obliged to seize his weapon to secure his own safety. 

 The two shots from the 577 Express rifle told home, one in the 

 side the other in the shoulder, but one of the buffaloes needed 

 three more bullets before he succumbed. This success was, 

 however, but a lucky accident, and hunting solitary buffalo 

 bulls is always most dangerous. The next day the Count 

 brought down a mother rhinoceros and her little one — quite a 

 baby. We had often eaten the flesh of zebras, antelopes, 

 and buffaloes, but we had never tried that of a rhinoceros. 

 We now had some bits of the baby broiled and found them 

 quite tender, without any unpleasant flavour. In fact they 

 were more like beef than the flesh of any game we had yet 

 tasted. The porters liked it very much, but the Somal would 

 not touch it. 



Our food had now for a long time consisted almost entirely 

 of meat, and only on special occasions did we get some 

 stiff porridge made of millet, dhurra, or eleusine meal. The 

 haunches and shoulders of the sheep and goats were re- 

 served for us, with the tongues {ulimi), steaks [serara ndani), 

 humps [niandu), and breasts [Iddari) of the oxen, the last- 

 named being boiled, whilst the tongues were roasted on a spit 

 for a very long time. We tried to eat the same portions of 

 the buffalo, but they were comparatively coarse, and had a 

 strong flavour of musk. Bufialo tongues require washing for 

 weeks before they cease to resemble indiarubber, whilst twelve 

 or eight hours' boiling makes the kidari or breast portions of 

 oxen quite tender and tasty. It is just the same with the 

 kidari of the eland. Our diet, therefore, contained more 

 albuminoids than anything else, our stores of hydrocarbons, 

 such as meal, rice, sugar, honey, and the like, being long since 



