422 ON SAFARI IN SOTIK WILDERNESS AND LAKE NAIVASHA 
have been sure to provoke a charge. Had a shot been fired it would 
have roused the latent ferocity of the dangerous beasts, with the same 
result. The imperilled hunters were obliged to stand motionless and 
stare back at the staring herd. As it proved, the movement of the 
animals was due only to curiosity. After a few seconds of intense sus¬ 
pense, the hunters were overjoyed to see their horned foes wheel again 
and rush away across the plain. The peril had passed; their lives were 
saved; but never before had any of them gone through a minute of such 
deadly risk. 
At the end of the five weeks’ hunt in Sotik the Roosevelt expedi¬ 
tion set out on their return, heading now towards Lake Naivasha, in 
the Rift Valley, where it was proposed to hunt for hippopotami. Mr. 
Roosevelt desired to bag three of these animals for the Smithsonian 
Institution, a bull, a cow, and a calf; also to obtain a specimen of the 
rare dig-dig antelope, a bushback and a baboon. He had been invited 
to spend a season on Captain R. Attenborough’s farm, Saigai Sai, 
adjoining the lake, the captain ofifering him, the use of his launch in his 
hippo hunts. 
The journey outward from Sotik resembled the inward one. 
Though pursuing a different route, it was over a practically waterless 
country as before, long marches being made with such supplies of this 
necessary liquid as the porters could carry. At one part of their march 
they sought a known water-hole on the line of march and reached it 
to find it absolutely dry. That night they had to go without water. 
Reaching the shores of Lake Naivasha, the camp was pitched in 
a sandy and dusty spot, the water-side being fringed with a growth 
of papyrus, bush and thorn trees. This place was reached on July 13. 
On the 14th the camp was visited by a newspaper correspondent who 
had ridden thither twenty-five miles on a bicycle. He was warmly 
greeted and had the good fortune to see ex-President Roosevelt on the 
lake in a hippopotamus hunt. It gave the looker-on a thrill of apprehen¬ 
sion to see the daring hunter in a frail rowing boat at the moment 
that a huge hippopotamus was in the act of charging the craft. Un¬ 
used to such scenes, the newspaper man found it difficult to control his 
nerves as he witnessed what seemed the imminent danger of the 
distinguished man before him. Yet his spasm of dread was changed 
