the tall grass. Just before I
reached the actual slope, however, I revised my schedule. The reason was
supplied by a rhino that came grunting to his feet about seventy yards
away. He had not seen me, and he had not smelled me, but the general
disturbance of all these events had broken into his early morning nap.
He looked to me like a person who is cross before breakfast, so I ducked
low and ran around him. The last I saw of him he was still standing
there, quite disgruntled, and evidently intending to write to the
directors about it.

Arriving at the top, I looked eagerly down. The cliff fell away at an
impossible angle, but sheer below ran out a narrow bench fifty yards
wide. Around the point of the hill to my right-where the herd had gone-a
game trail dropped steeply to this bench. I arrived just in time to see
the sing-sing, still trotting, file across the bench and over its edge,
on some other invisible game trail, to continue their descent of the
cliff. The big buck brought up the rear. At the very edge he came to a
halt, and looked back, throwing his head up and his nose out so that the
heavy fur on his neck stood forward like a ruff. It was a last glimpse
of him, so I held my little best, and pulled trigger.

This happened to be one of those shots I spoke of-which the perpetrator
accepts with a thankful and humble spirit. The sing-sing leaped high in
the air and plunged over the edge of the bench. I signalled the camp-in
plain sight-to come and get the head and meat, and sat down to wait. And
while waiting, I looked out on a scene that has since been to me one of
my four symbolizations of Africa.

The morning was dull, with gray clouds through which at wide intervals
streamed broad bands of misty light. Below me the cliff fell away clear
to a gorge in the depths of which flowed a river. Then the land began
to rise, broken, sharp, tumbled, terrible, tier after tier, gorge
after gorge, one twisted range after the other, across a breathlessly
immeasurable distance. The prospect was full of shadows thrown by the
tumult of lava. In those shadows one imagined stranger abysses. Far down
to the right a long narrow lake inaugurated a flatter, alkali-whitened
country of low cliffs in long straight lines. Across the distances
proper to a dozen horizons the tumbled chaos heaved and fell. The eye
sought rest at the bounds usual to its accustomed world-and went on.
There was no roundness to the earth, no grateful curve to