After a good night’s sleep I felt much better, and decided to walk when we made a start next morning, handing the mule over to George, who had been very seedy ever since we left Nairobi, the result of his recent severe illness in Uganda. When the tents were struck, we headed due northwards to Doenyo Sabuk, which was now beginning to show up more clearly on the horizon. It was about twenty miles distant, and we calculated that two days’ further marching would take us round it. Soon after we started Knapp shot a guinea-fowl. He used a Winchester repeating shot-gun, a perfectly horrible contrivance, of which he was very proud. When the cartridges were ejected it clanked and rattled like a collection of scrap iron being shaken in a sack. During that march we had a maddening time with the ticks, with which the Athi plains are infested. They were large, flat, red ticks, similar to those I have seen in Rhodesia (_Ixodes plumbeus?_). They clung to our clothing and persons like limpets to a rock. We should not have minded a dozen or two, at least not so much, but they swarmed on us literally in thousands. We halted every few moments while Ramathani brushed us down, but, so soon as we were comparatively cleared of them, we picked up a fresh batch from the long grass. They bite very badly, and taking them by and large, as a sailor would say, they were very powerful and vigorous vermin; almost as vigorous as the language we wasted upon them. About an hour after we started we sighted a rhinoceros fast asleep in the grass, about three hundred yards down wind. George and I examined him with the binoculars—the others were a mile ahead—and as we were not out looking for rhinoceros just then, we passed on. We had proceeded barely a quarter of a mile when a confused shouting from the rear caused us to look round. The sleeping rhinoceros had wakened, and proceeded to impress the fact upon the safari. Having winded the men he incontinently charged them, and when George and I glanced back we saw the ungainly brute trotting backwards and forwards among our loads, which the men had hurriedly dropped while they scattered for dear life over the landscape. It was certainly very awkward, as it looked very much as if I should have to go back and slay it, which, I will confess, I was very loth to do, as Ramathani was some distance ahead with all my spare ammunition. The magazine of my ·303 contained only half a dozen cartridges, with soft-nosed bullets. I diplomatically waited a while to see if the brute felt disposed to move; but it was apparently perfectly satisfied with its immediate surroundings, and stood over the deserted loads snorting and stamping and looking exceedingly ugly.