VII 
JOURNEY TO WEBBE SHABELEH RIVER 
187 
skin and head, and marking his course chose a bush eighty 
yards away, aligning the sight so as to be ready to fire when 
he should come out into the open beyond on our side. I held 
the ivory foresight over this spot, and as he passed the bush 
and his head and shoulders appeared, I pulled, a satisfactory 
thud answering the ring of the rifle ; and in the stillness follow- 
ing the shot I saw a tail violently agitated above the grass. 
Slipping in a fresh cartridge, I walked up and found the panther 
dead, shot through the neck. 
I laid his body by the side of that of the tvalleri , and photo- 
graphed the pair, cutting down some thorn-trees, whose branches 
threw long shadows over the picture ; then calling for the camels 
and loading up the bodies, we followed the tracks of the caravan, 
and found camp pitched two miles from the scene of this incident. 
We made two marches to Haljfd, where, hearing by night 
the croaking of thousands of frogs, we discovered a considerable 
body of water, in the form of a pool half a mile long, occupying 
the river channel in the centre of the Jerer Valley. There were 
plenty of rhino, beisa, and lesser koodoo tracks here. I remained 
halted all day on 5th April, shooting three beisa out of a herd ; 
and on the evening of the 6th we marched to Tuli. We lost 
our way while hunting at some distance from the caravan, and 
only found the new camp at midnight after signal shots had 
been fired. I remained in this neighbourhood for four days to 
hunt, as rhinoceroses were numerous, coming to drink at night 
at the pools in the centre of the valley, and going away great 
distances in every direction to hide in the thick mimosa forests 
by day. The best way to find them is to visit the pools in the 
early morning, and follow any tracks of the night before. In 
this way, after four or five hours 5 tracking, one is likely to come 
upon them feeding, or, if after eleven o’clock, lying under a 
shady bush asleep. 
On 7th April my men found a dozen young ostriches in the 
thick jungle near Tuli Hill. They were pretty little birds with 
soft yellow and black down for plumage, and beady black eyes, 
and stood a foot high, on sturdy yellow legs. I did all I could 
to get the parent cock bird : first, by following behind a camel, 
and then by sitting till mid-day in ambush near the nest; but 
all attempts were unavailing. We had these young birds for 
ten days or more in our camp, carrying them, when marching, 
in hutches made of empty beer-boxes, on camel-back ; and they 
became very tame, but eventually, one by one, all died. 
