CHAP. X NOTED BOER HUNTERS 179 



culty of understanding the true character of the 

 African black or prehensile-Hpped rhinoceros ; but 

 perhaps I ought to have said " my own " difficulty, 

 for never having had my life seriously endangered 

 by any one of the many animals of this species 

 which I met with at a time when they were still 

 fairly numerous in the interior of South Africa, I 

 have always found it very difficult to credit the vast 

 majority of these stupidly inquisitive but dull-sighted 

 brutes with the vindictiveness and ferocity of dis- 

 position that has often been attributed to the whole 

 race. I am, it must be understood, now speak- 

 ing only of the black rhinoceros in Africa to the 

 south of the Zambesi. In other parts of the 

 continent I have had no experience of these 

 animals. 



In Southern Africa the black as well as the 

 white rhinoceros has been almost absolutely exter- 

 minated during the last sixty years. During that 

 period, thousands upon thousands of these animals 

 have been killed, at a cost to human life so trifling, 

 that I submit it is impossible to contend that, speak- 

 ing generally, the hunting and shooting of black 

 rhinoceroses was an exceptionally dangerous under- 

 taking. 



When a young man I was personally acquainted 

 with several of the most noted of the old Boer 

 hunters — Petrus Jacobs, Jan Viljoen, Martinus 

 Swart, Michael Engelbreght, and others — who 

 were amongst the first white men to penetrate to 

 the wondrous hunting-grounds beyond the Lim- 

 popo ; but I never heard of any Boer hunter having 

 been killed by a black rhinoceros. 



Amongst the early English hunters, who were 

 probably more reckless and less experienced than 

 the Boers, a few accidents certainly happened, but, 

 considering the number of rhinoceroses they killed, 

 they must have been favoured with extraordinarily 



