304 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
all the game hereabouts, and they annoyed us a little also, 
although very far from being the plague they were on the 
Athi Plain. Among the flies which at times tormented the 
horses and hung around the game, were big gadflies with 
long wings folded longitudinally down the back, not in the 
ordinary fly fashion; they were akin to the tsetse flies, one 
species of which is fatal to domestic animals, and another, 
the sleeping-sickness fly, to man himself. They produce 
death by means of the fatal microbes introduced into the 
blood by their bite; whereas another African fly, the seroot, 
found more to the north, in the Nile countries, is a scourge 
to man and beast merely because of its vicious bite, and 
where it swarms may drive the tribes that own herds entirely 
out of certain districts. 
One afternoon, while leading my horse because the 
ground was a litter of sharp-edged stones, I came out on a 
plain which was crawling with zebra. In every direction 
there were herds of scores or of hundreds. They were all 
of the common or small kind, except three individuals of 
the big kangani, and were tame, letting me walk by within 
easy shot. Other game was mixed in with them. Soon, 
walking over a little ridge of rocks, we saw a rhino sixty 
yards off. To walk forward would give it our wind; I did 
not wish to kill it; and I was beginning to feel about rhino 
the way Alice did in Looking Glass country, when the ele¬ 
phants “did bother so.’^ Having spied us the beast at once 
cocked its ears and tail, and assumed its usual absurd re¬ 
semblance to a huge and exceedingly alert and interested 
pig. But with a rhino tragedy sometimes treads on the 
heels of comedy, and I watched it sharply, my rifle cocked, 
while I had all the men shout in unison to scare it away. 
