410 RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO [ch. xiv 
and Grogan went off for the day to see if they could 
not get some live rhino photos. Cuninghame started 
to join Heller at the temporary camp which we had 
made beside the dead rhino, in order to help him with 
the skin and skeletons. Mearns and Loring were busy 
with birds, small beasts, and photographs. So, as we 
were out of fresh meat, I walked away from camp to 
get some, followed by my gun-bearers, the little mule 
with its well-meaning and utterly ignorant shenzi sais, 
and a dozen porters. 
We first went along the river brink to look for 
crocodiles. In most places the bank was high and 
steep. Wherever it was broken there was a drinking 
place, with leading down to it trails deeply rutted in 
the soil by the herds of giant game that had travelled 
them for untold years. At this point the Nile was 
miles wide, and was divided into curving channels which 
here and there spread into lake-like expanses of still 
water. Along the edges of the river, and between the 
winding channels and lagoons, grew vast water-fields of 
papyrus, their sheets and bands of dark green breaking 
the burnished silver of the sunlit waters. Beyond the 
farther bank rose steep, sharply peaked hills. The tri¬ 
coloured fish eagles, striking to the eye because of their 
snow-white heads and breasts, screamed continually— 
a wild, eerie sound. Cormorants and snake-birds were 
perched on trees overhanging the water, and flew away, 
or plunged like stones into the stream, as I approached ; 
herons of many kinds rose from the marshy edges of the 
bays and inlets ; wattled and spur-winged plovers circled 
overhead ; and I saw a party of hippopotami in a shallow 
on the other side of the nearest channel, their lazy bulks 
raised above water as they basked asleep in the sun. 
The semi-diurnal slate-and-yellow bats flitted from one 
