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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



a second look before I made out that they were cow herons perched on 

 the back of a rhino. This proved to be a bull, which joined a cow 

 and a calf. None had decent horns, and we plodded on. Soon we 

 came to the trial of two others, and after a couple of miles' tracking 

 Kongoni pointed to two gray bulks lying down under a tree. I 

 walked cautiously to within thirty yards. They heard something, and 

 up rose the two pig-like blinking creatures, who gradually became 

 aware of my presence, and retreated a few steps at a time, dull 

 curiosity continually overcoming an uneasiness which never grew 

 into fear. Tossing their stumpy-horned heads, and twistnig their 

 tails into tight knots, they ambled briskly from side to side, and were 

 ten minutes in getting to a distance of a hundred yards. Then our 

 shenzi guide mentioned that there were other rhinos close by, and we 

 walked off to inspect them. In three hundred yards we came on them, 

 a cow and a well-grown calf. Sixty yards from them was an ant- 

 hill with little trees on it. From this we looked at them until some 

 sound or other must have made them uneasy, for up they got. The 

 young one seemed to have rather keener suspicions, although no 

 more sense, than its mother, and after a while grew so restless that it 

 persuaded the cow to go off with it. But the still air gave no hint 

 of our whereabouts, and they walked straight toward us. I did not 

 wish to have to shoot one, and so when they were within thirty yards 

 we raised a shout and away they cantered, heads tossing and tails 

 twisting. 



" Three hours later we saw another cow and calf. By this time it 

 was half-past three in the afternoon and the two animals had risen 

 from their noonday rest and were grazing busily, the great clumsy 

 heads sweeping the ground. Watching them forty yards off it was 

 some time before the cow raised her head high enough for me to see 

 that her horns were not good. Then they became suspicious, and the 

 cow stood motionless for several minutes, her head held low. We 

 moved quietly back, and at last they either dimly saw us, or heard us, 

 and stood looking toward us, their big ears cocked forward. At this 

 moment we stumbled on a rhino skull, bleached, but in such good 

 preservation that we knew Heller would like it ; and we loaded it on 

 the porters that had followed us. All the time we were thus engaged 

 the two rhinos, only a hundred yards off, were intently gazing in our 

 direction, with foolish and bewildered solemnity; and there we left 

 them, survivors from a long vanished world, standing alone in the 

 parched desolation of the wilderness. 



" On another day Kermit saw ten rhino, none with more than 



