African Game Trails 
519 
calloused from its habit of going down on 
them when fighting or threatening fight. 
Our march was northward, a long day’s 
journey to what was called a salt marsh. 
An hour or two after starting we had a 
characteristic experience with a rhino. It 
was a bull, with poor horns, standing in a 
plain which was dotted by a few straggling 
thorn trees and wild olives. The safari’s 
course would have taken it to windward of 
the rhino, which then might have charged 
in sheer irritable bewilderment; so we 
turned off at right angles. The long line 
of porters passed him two hundred yards 
away, while we gun men stood between with 
our rifles ready; except Kermit, who was 
busy taking photos. The rhino saw us, 
but apparently indistinctly. He made little 
dashes to and fro, and finally stood looking 
at us, with his big ears cocked forward; but 
he did nothing more, and we left him stand¬ 
ing, plunged in meditation—probably it 
would be more accurate to say, thinking of 
absolutely nothing, as if he had been a 
huge turtle. After leaving him we also 
passed by files of zebra and topi who gazed 
at us, intent and curious, within two hun¬ 
dred yards, until we had gone by and the 
danger was over; whereupon they fled in 
fright. 
The so-called salt marsh consisted of a 
dry watercourse, with here and there a deep 
muddy pool. The ground was impreg¬ 
nated with some saline substance, and the 
game licked it, as well as coming to water. 
Our camp was near two reedy pools, in 
which there were big yellow-billed ducks, 
while queer brown heron, the hammer¬ 
head, had built big nests of sticks in the tall 
acacias. Bush cuckoos gurgled in the un¬ 
derbrush by night and day. Brilliant roll¬ 
ers flitted through the trees. There was 
much sweet bird music in the morning. 
Funny little elephant shrews with long 
snouts, and pretty zebra mice, evidently of 
diurnal habit, scampered among the bushes 
or scuttled into their burrows. Tiny dik- 
diks, antelopes no bigger than hares, with 
swollen muzzles, and their little horns half 
hidden by tufts of hair, ran like rabbits 
through the grass; the females were at 
least as large as the males. Another seven- 
foot cobra was killed. There were brilliant 
masses of the red aloe flowers, and of yel¬ 
low-blossomed vines. Around the pools 
the ground was bare, and the game trails 
