AFRICAN RESEARCHES. 405 



to be brought down or a rhinoceros despatched, if such a step 

 became desirable ? He could make allowance, in taking aim, 

 for the doubling of his rifle-barrel, and grasp it round so firm- 

 ly at the breech with his left hand, as to prevent its bursting, 

 whilst the percussion cap could be exploded by a blow from 

 his pocket-knife or a stone. The odds were fearfully against 

 him, but " nothing venture nothing have," and he determined 

 to go on. The goal of his ambition was at length within his 

 reach, but ; — he was still doomed to disappointment. — 



" In vain Iiooked around for a stone, and sought in every pocket for my 

 knife, with which to strike the copper cap, and bring ahout ignition, or ham- 

 string the colossal hut harmless animal, hy whose side I appeared the veri- 

 est pigmy in the creation — alas, I had lent it to the Hottentots to cut off 

 the head of the hartebeest. Vainly did I wait for the tardy and rebellious 

 villains to come to my assistance, making the air ring, and my throat tin- 

 gle, with reiterated shouts — not a soul appeared ; and in a few minutes, the 

 giraffe having recovered his wind, and being only slightly wounded in the 

 hind quarters, shuffled his long legs, twisted his tail over his back, walked 

 a few steps, then broke into a gallop, and diving into the mazes of the fo- 

 rest, disappeared from my sight." 



On our author's return to the camp, he found that while he 

 was pursuing the giraffe, his companion in the expedition, a 

 brother officer and a devoted sportsman, had also damaged 

 his rifle, by firing it down the throat of an infuriated rhino- 

 ceros ; an operation by the bye, which we should have felt as 

 shy of, as that of discharging a bent barrel, by rapping the 

 nipple with a pocket knife. 



"Richardson shortly returned, having been engaged in close conflict with 

 a rhinoceros. Aroused from a siesta by the smarting of a gun-shot wound, 

 the infuriated animal had pursued his assailant so closely, that it became 

 necessary to discharge the second barrel into his mouth, an operation by 

 which the stock was much disfigured. I employed the rest of the day in 

 repairing my own weapon with the iron clamp of a box, binding it with a strip 

 of green hide from the carcase of an eland." 



We should have imagined the corpus of his friend Richard- 

 son to have stood a far greater chance of being " disfigured" 

 than the stock of the rifle ; but had it been so, we don't for a 

 moment suppose the Captain would have deemed this a cir- 

 cumstance of sufficient importance to have entered in his 

 journal. 



The w T hite rhinoceros was found to be much less dangerous 

 than the black, but every four-legged animal seems to have 

 been pretty much the same to the Captain ; for whenever the 

 mammiferes, no matter what their genus or species, evinced 

 the slightest disposition to exceed the rules of propriety, the 



