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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



the rhino I had hit, Kermit and I close behind, and Loring with us. 

 The rhino had gone straight off at a gallop, and the trail offered little 

 difficulty, so we walked fast. A couple of hours passed. The sun was 

 now high and heat intense as we walked over the burned ground. 

 The scattered trees bore such scanty foliage as to cast hardly any 

 shade. The rhino galloped strongly and without faltering ; but there 

 was a good deal of blood on the trail. At last, after we had gone 

 seven or eight miles, Kiboko the skinner, who was acting as my gun- 

 bearer, pointed toward a small thorn tree ; and beside it I saw the 

 rhino standing with drooping head. It had been fatally hit, and if 

 undisturbed would probably never have moved from where it was 

 standing; and we finished it off forthwith. It was a cow, and before 

 dying it ran round and round in a circle, in the manner of the common 

 rhino. 



" .... Meanwhile Kermit and I, with our gun-bearers, went 

 off with a ' shenzi,' a wild native who had just come in with the 

 news that he knew where another rhino was lying a few miles away. 

 While bound thither we passed numbers of oribi, and went close to a 

 herd of waterbuck which stared at us with stupid tameness ; a single 

 hartebeest was with them. When we reached the spot there was the 

 rhino, sure enough, under a little tree, sleeping on his belly, his legs 

 doubled up, and his, head flat on the ground. Unfortunately the grass 

 was long, so that it was almost impossible to photograph him. How- 

 ever, Kermit tried to get his picture from an ant-hill fifty yards dis- 

 tant, and then, Kermit, with his camera and I with my rifle, we walked 

 up to within about twenty yards. At this point we halted, and on the 

 instant the rhino jumped to his feet with surprising agility and trotted 

 a few yards out from under the tree. It was a huge bull, with a fair 

 horn ; much the biggest bull we had yet seen ; and with head up and 

 action high, the sun glinting on his slate hide and bringing out his 

 enormous bulk, he was indeed a fine sight. I waited a moment for 

 Kermit to snap him. Unfortunately the waving grass spoiled the pic- 

 ture. Then I fired right and left into his body behind the shoulders, 

 and down he went. In color he seemed of exactly the same shade as 

 the common rhino, but he was taller and heavier, being 6 feet high. 

 He carried a stout horn, a little over 2 feet long ; the girth at the base 

 was very great. 



" We wished for another cow rhino, so as to have a bull and a cow 

 both for the National Museum at Washington, and for the American 

 Museum in New York ; and Kermit was to shoot this. Accordingly 



