164 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
and continued on our course. The day was windy and 
cool, and the sky often overcast. Slowly we walked across 
the stretches of brown grassland, sometimes treeless, some¬ 
times scantily covered with an open growth of thorn-trees, 
each branch armed with long spikes, needle-sharp; and 
among the thorns here and there stood the huge cactus-like 
euphorbias, shaped like candelabra, groups of tall aloes, 
and gnarled wild olives of great age, with hoary trunks 
and twisted branches. Now and then there would be a dry 
watercourse, with flat-topped acacias bordering it, and 
perhaps some one pool of thick greenish water. There 
was game always in view, and about noon we sighted three 
rhinos, a bull, a cow, and a big calf, nearly a mile ahead of 
us. We were travelling down wind, and they scented us, 
but did not charge, making off in a semicircle and halting 
when abreast of us. We examined them carefully through 
the glasses. The cow was bigger than the bull, and had 
fair horns, but nothing extraordinary; and as we were 
twelve miles from camp, so that Heller would have had to 
come out for the night if we shot her, we decided to leave 
her alone. Then our attention was attracted by seeing 
the game all gazing in one direction, and we made out a 
hyena; I got a shot at it, at three hundred yards, but missed. 
Soon afterward we saw another rhino, but on approaching 
it proved to be about two-thirds grown, with a stubby horn. 
We did not wish to shoot it, and therefore desired to avoid 
a charge; and so we passed three or four hundred yards to 
leeward, trusting to its bad eyesight. Just opposite it, 
when it was on our right, we saw another hyena on our left, 
about as far off as the rhino. I decided to take a shot, and 
run the chance of disturbing the rhino. So I knelt down 
