HUNTING ON LAKE SOLAI 
173 
we crept in, they might have been, approached within 
fifteen yards—though fifty would have been near 
enough. 
By way of concluding this unbroken record of 
catastrophe, it may be added that a few weeks later I 
was informed by the Hon. Cyril Ward that he had come 
across, on the Molo River, a newly-killed rhinoceros 
corresponding in description to the above, and a couple 
of days later than the events here described. The 
distance between the two points would be some ten or 
twelve miles. 
During the campward march, querulous, despondent 
thought was deflected into new channels by a curious 
incident. Afar on the veld fluttered some white object. 
Thinking it might be a signal placed by my brother direct¬ 
ing us to a message from him—a back-veld post-office— 
I rode thither. It proved to be the landmark of a new 
farm-boundary ! Even these remote wilds were being 
bought up by enterprising settlers. In a few years, 
presumptively, cattle and sheep will have displaced the 
lion, the rhino and the eland. Such is British progress, 
and it is right. At home under “ Free Trade ”—be it 
for better or for worse—success in pastoral or agri¬ 
cultural pursuits has long been impossible; such oc¬ 
cupations were deliberately sacrificed generations ago, 
to the interest of manufactures and cognate industries. 
At home—so long as our islands remain the workshop 
of the world—the artisan and mechanic may flourish : 
the farmer and flock-master never. Whether these 
latter can profitably be translated to equatorial uplands, 
time and hard experience alone will show. The energy 
and enterprise are not lacking, as this incident tends to 
show; but Equatoria presents problems, and perhaps 
difficulties, which differ fundamentally from those of 
Canada or the Antipodes. May they prove soluble! 
The converse a naturalist may be allowed to regret, 
namely, that when British flock-masters shall have 
settled-up the African veld, we cannot also translate 
the displaced elephants and rhinos, the lions, antelopes 
