Rhinoceros were perhaps most plentiful on the frontier, and were often encountered when patrolling the thick bush, or bush-covered hill-country. During the many times I have met those animals at close quarters—and I have stumbled across as many as four separate animals in a single night when on particular reconnaissance—I have never known them to charge seriously when not wounded. I have experienced them rush straight on to the sound of a stick crackling underfoot, but, when they drew close and got my wind, they veered off instantly to one side, and escaped in the bush rapidly and fearfully. I remarked my experiences to Selous, for they were not what I had been led to expect, and he corroborated them by saying that he also had never seen one charge a man when unmolested. Selous, too, in discussing lions, in his quiet, practical way, laid very little stress on the dangers of hunting those animals. He said there was little danger of their ever venturing to attack unless wounded, and then the greatest danger was in going into long grass to search for an animal that in all probability would be lying there concealed, and at bay, and ready to spring on an over-hasty pursuer. Selous’s advice was that, “in hunting lions you should try to get a clean clear shot at your quarry, at fairly close quarters, and to shoot to kill with your first shot.” “Don’t attempt snapshots and wild shooting, which only lead to a bad hit, and a dangerous lion at bay to be dealt with.” The eerie roar of lions was often heard at night outside our camps, or near to the bivouac of a lonely outpost, and sometimes, through the day, they were seen by our outlying pickets; but I only know of three being shot by members of our battalion during our service in East Africa. [Sidenote: BIRD LIFE] I turn now to the bird life of the country. In the bush, in the neighbourhood of water, birds, of various kinds, were often plentiful, and were remarkable, as a rule, for their brilliant plumage. But they were seldom conspicuous in numbers in the open, for, as a rule, they kept closely within the cover of the bush and jungle grass; and on this account I have often heard unobservant men remark on how little bird life they saw during the campaign in East Africa. Their unobtrusiveness, too, was added to by the fact that very few African birds are songsters. I think the bird most commonly seen throughout the campaign was the Red-eyed Turtle Dove (_Streptopelia semitorquata_), and their soft cooing in the quiet evenings was certainly the outstanding note of bird life in the country. It is a truly African sound—a sound which one who has heard it will always associate with African fantasy—and which sometimes strikes the ear as most pleasant and soothing, and, at other times, haunts you with its persistent hint of native sadness.