I returned with the two heads to camp, and sent half a dozen men to cut off the shields, of which we obtained thirty-five from the two skins. These men arrived in camp next morning, and said that while they had been cutting up the rhinos by the light of torches, several more had come round them, and a lion had roared to the westward.
On our second day at Túli we were unsuccessful with the rhinos, and when the water came from Dagahbúr we marched to Gumbur Wedel, a small hill four miles to the north-west across the Rhinoceros Valley. Here we found oryx, ostriches, and Sœmmering’s and Waller’s gazelles very plentiful, and rhino tracks numerous. My brother was very keen to get a rhino, but had so far had no luck.
At 5 A.M. on 6th August we left Wedel, and for three miles struggled through thick grass and jungle, and then struck a good path running north-west. After going a mile along this I saw fresh rhino tracks where a pair had crossed the path during the night, and so going on with the caravan, I left my brother to take up the pursuit. At our evening camp he arrived with the heads of both, a very fine bull and a cow, and we skinned them by firelight.
On the morning of the 7th August the caravan marched sixteen miles to a karia of the Rer Gedi, Abbasgúl, to us a new sub-tribe, at a place called Haddáma. Early in the day, while walking along the path, I came on the fresh tracks of a large bull rhino, so, as it was my turn, leaving the caravan and traversing work in charge of my brother, I left the path on these tracks, followed by Géli and Hassan. The rhinoceros had taken a straight line for a ridge of low hills to the south, which are a continuation of the Harar Highlands, and after following for several miles through thick jungle and over burnt clearings, the sun getting hotter and hotter, we at last put him up at about noon, making him rush off through the forest without our even getting a sight of him. I took up the tracking patiently for an hour more, and then we heard the trampling and snorting and smashing of thorn-trees again. Following at a run, we saw him standing broadside on, listening, in the centre of several acres of very transparent but dense and thorny wait-a-bit cover. We at once lay down. Not hearing our footsteps any more, the rhino trotted forward, head held high, for fifty yards, and then stood and listened again. He looked decidedly vicious. We crawled up to a small evergreen shrub, and I sat up behind it, and taking a steady rest upon my knees, fired for his ear at a range of seventy yards with my ten-bore rifle.