With arms that welcome and rejoice, We heard him gasping, in a voice By strong emotion rendered harsh: “That Marsh--that Admirable Marsh!” The Tears of Avarice that rise In purely visionary eyes, Were rolling down his nose. He was no longer Blood the Bold, The Terror of his foes; But Blood inflamed with greed of gold. He saw us, and at once became The Blood we knew, the very same Whom we had loved so long. He looked affectionately sly, And said, “perhaps you wonder why My feelings are so strong? You only see a swamp, but I---- My friends, I will explain it. I know some gentlemen in town Will give me fifty thousand down, Merely for leave to drain it.” A little later on we found A piece of gently rolling ground That showed above the flat. Such a protuberance or rise As wearies European eyes. To common men, like Sin and me The Eminence appeared to be As purposeless as that. Blood saw another meaning there, He turned with a portentous glare, And shouted for the Native Name. The Black interpreter in shame Replied: “The native name I fear Is something signifying Mud.” Then, with the gay bravado That suits your jolly Pioneer, In his prospectus Captain Blood Baptized it “Eldorado.” He also said the Summit rose Majestic with Eternal Snows. VIII. Now it behoves me (or behooves) To give a retrospect that proves What foresight can achieve, The kind of thing that (by the way) Men in our cold agnostic day Must come from Africa to say, From England to believe. Blood had, while yet we were in town, Said with his intellectual frown: “Suppose a Rhino knocks you down And walks upon you like a mat, Think of the public irritation, If with an incident like that, We cannot give an illustration.” Seeing we should be at a loss To reproduce the scene, We bought a stuffed rhinocerous, A Kodak, and a screen. We fixed a picture. William pressed A button, and I did the rest. To those Carnivora that make An ordinary Person quake We did not give a care. [Illustration ** Our three travellers easing away from tent as a lion takes down an African.] The Lion never will attack A White, if he can get a Black. And there were such a lot of these We could afford with perfect ease To spare one here and there. It made us more compact--and then-- It’s right to spare one’s fellow men. Of far more consequence to us, And much more worthy to detain us, The very creature that we feared (I mean the white Rhinoceros, “_Siste Viator Africanus_”) In all its majesty appeared.