178 
ON SAFARI 
west, without seeing anything beyond the usual game 
—a few zebras, ostriches, gazelles, and some klipspringers 
on the crags—when about ten o’clock we sat down 
beneath a mimosa and sent our gun-bearers over the 
rocky range on the west to investigate what lay beyond. 
Presently to us smoking in the shade they reported 
three rhinos in the valley be}mnd, and having scaled this 
ridge we verified the fact for ourselves, the rhinos looking 
absolutely pure white (owing to the calcareous mud they 
had last wallowed in). They were a couple of miles 
away, down the wind, and moving further in that 
direction—involving a long detour. The wind, more¬ 
over, was shifty and treacherous, so that many changes 
in tactics became necessary before we gained a command¬ 
ing position. 
The scene of operations was a flat-floored valley two 
miles across, walled-in by low abrupt hills and over¬ 
grown with thin open forest, mostly thorns. Beneath 
a group of these—shady, flat-topped mimosas—two of 
the rhinos had, during our long manoeuvres with the 
wind, drawn up to spend their midday siesta. The 
third we could not see, but knew he was in the bush 
somewhere near by. 
The feature of this stalk was the extraordinary 
callousness to threatening danger, and its manifold signs, 
displayed by those two great pachyderms. Owing to 
the constantly-varying wind, puffs of which came from 
opposite airts within a few seconds of each other, we had 
twice unwittingly given alarm to some groups of harte- 
beests and gazelles 1 that happened to fall under our lee. 
On one of these occasions several antelopes galloped past 
within a comparatively short distance of the sleepy mon¬ 
sters, but without arousing their suspicion. Then, during 
the final approach, when we were already close in, a band 
of shrieking plovers (Stephanibyx melanopterus )—the 
1 These gazelles were all G. granti, except a single example of 
G. tliomsoni —the only one seen at Solai, which clearly lies north 
of their range, though they are abundant a dozen miles to the 
southward. 
