African Game Trails 
259 
the fact that the forests contained junipers; 
but they also contained monkeys, a small 
green monkey, and the big guerza, with its 
long silky hair and bold black-and-white 
coloring. Kermit, Heller, and Loring shot 
several. There were rhinoceros and buffalo 
in the neighborhood. A few days previously 
some buffalo had charged, unprovoked, a 
couple of the native boys of the mission, who 
had escaped only by their agility in tree¬ 
climbing. On one of his trips to an outlying 
mission station, Mr. Hurlburt had himself 
night; but on a serious trip of any kind 
loads must be carried, and laden porters 
cannot go fast, and must rest at intervals. 
We had rather more than our porters could 
carry, and needed additional transporta¬ 
tion for the water for the safari; and we 
had hired four ox-wagons. They were un¬ 
der the lead of a fine young Colonial Eng¬ 
lishman named Ulyate, whose great-grand¬ 
father had come to South Africa in 1820, as 
part of the most important English emigra¬ 
tion that ever went thither. His father and 
Mr. Roosevelt after luncheon with the head missionary 
From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt. 
narrowly escaped a serious accident. Quite 
wantonly, a cow rhino, with a calf, charged 
the safari almost before they knew of its 
presence. It attacked Hurlburt’s mule, 
which fortunately he was not riding, and 
tossed and killed it; it passed through the 
line, and then turned and again charged it, 
this time attacking one of the porters. The 
porter dodged behind a tree, and the rhino 
hit the tree, knocked off a huge flake of 
bark and wood, and galloped away. 
The trek across “the thirst,” as any 
waterless country is apt to be called by an 
Africander, is about sixty miles, by the road. 
On our horses we could have ridden it in a 
sisters had lunched with us at the mission¬ 
aries’ the day before; his wife’s baby was 
too young for her to come. It was the best 
kind of pioneer family; all the members, 
with some of their fellow colonials, had 
spent much of the preceding three years in 
adventurous exploration of the country in 
their ox-wagons, the wives and daughters 
as valiant as the men; one of the two 
daughters I met had driven one of the ox- 
wagons on the hardest and most dangerous 
trip they made, while her younger sister led 
the oxen. It was on this trip that they had 
pioneered the way across the waterless route 
I was to take. For those who, like our- 
