At sunrise on the morning of September 1st we were again on the road. We saw several herds of water-buck on the banks of the Waso Nyiro, but they were very shy and most difficult to approach. The river ran in a direction almost due north. The further we followed it to the north and east the scarcer became the vegetation. Rhinoceros became once more unpleasantly numerous, and during that morning’s march we dodged several who at one time bade fair to disperse our little company. I suppose that they have their uses, though they are inconvenient at times. I know of nothing better for livening up the monotony of an otherwise uninteresting march, than a crusty old rhino who has just been roused from a refreshing nap. A lion does not create half so much excitement. El Hakim and George had to bestir themselves on one occasion during the morning, in order to prevent accident. It was in this wise. I was marching ahead, and contemplating as I went the manifold beauties of nature. A few yards behind me rode in silence El Hakim and George, also contemplating the beauties of nature—or were they thinking of the approach of lunch time? Anyhow, we were some few hundred yards ahead of the men when an agonized yell from Ramathani, who was in the rear, caused us to look round. There, not forty yards away, were two rhinoceros, a mother and a half-grown young one, coming straight for us with speedy but noiseless footsteps. I instantly took up a strategic position on the opposite side of an adjacent bush, and became an interested spectator, taking the precaution, however, to slip a cartridge into my rifle in case it should be needed. El Hakim and George dismounted with such rapidity that they almost seemed to fall off. Letting go the mules, who dashed away at full speed, they also selected a bush from which to view the procession, both of them being unarmed. The rhinos were by that time hardly half a dozen yards behind them, and scarcely had they slipped behind their respective bushes when the brutes charged right between us and went on. Not twenty seconds could have elapsed from the time Ramathani’s warning shout reached us to the time the rhinos passed, but to us it seemed nearer twenty minutes. I give this instance—one of many—to show how pleasantly one is kept on the _qui vive_ in the districts where the rhinoceros abounds, be the landscape ever so monotonous, or the march ever so weary.