126 ALONG LAKE RUDOLF 



The Count liad measured and I had photographed them, and 

 the men were standing about waiting for the moment when 

 they could fling themselves upon the booty, when the news 

 was brought that there was a buffalo close to us in a thicket 

 of succulent bush. It turned out to be a cow far advanced in 

 pregnancy, and she was scarcely a hundred paces off. She 

 presently charged the Count so furiously that it would have 

 gone ill with him if a shot had not killed her on the spot. 

 ■She was a specimen of the small northern buffalo known as 

 the Bos caffer, var. cequinoctialis. 



Our camp was some 650 yards from the water, and the 

 wind, laden with hot sand and dust, which blew in our faces 

 without ceasing, made our position anything but comfortable. 

 We were obliged to stop here, however, to wait for the missing 

 men ; and at noon Qualla came in, bringing with him one of 

 the four stragglers only, and that one in an insensible condition. 

 The other three he had found dead, and this sole survivor died 

 a few hours afterwards, without recovering consciousness. 



Towards sunset we received a visit in camp from a rhino- 

 ■ceros, which, thanks to the favourable direction of the wind, 

 remained sniffing about quite close to us without discovering 

 us, till Count Teleki brought him down. I must here add a 

 few words about the rhinoceroses we found near the lake, which 

 we were convinced belonged to a different variety to those we 

 had met with elsewhere. The chief peculiarity of the new 

 kind was the smallness of the head ; but the body was at least 

 ■one-third less in bulk than that of the animals we came across 

 in Masailand. On the other hand, the horns were finer and 

 more pointed, flattened out at the sides, or sometimes even 

 quite flat. We took it for granted, then, that in north and 

 north-east Africa live examples of the kinds of rhinoceros 

 occurring far away in the south ; and acting under this im- 

 pression we took careful drawings and measurements. It 



