i84 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



great danger from a black rhinoceros. He was 

 once chased when on horseback by one which he 

 had wounded, but from the account he gives of this 

 incident he could hardly have expected anything 

 else. He writes : " Becoming at last annoyed at 

 the length of the chase ... I determined to bring 

 matters to a crisis ; so, spurring my horse, I dashed 

 ahead and rode right in his path. Upon this the 

 hideous monster instantly charged me in the most 

 resolute manner, blowing loudly through his nostrils." 



C. J. Andersson, who travelled in Western South 

 Africa in the early 'fifties of the last century, was 

 also a mighty hunter. He states that he killed 

 ** many scores" of rhinoceroses — as many as sixty 

 in one season alone. He gives the black rhinoceros 

 a very bad character, saying that animals of this 

 species are not only of "a very sullen and morose dis- 

 position," but that they are also *' subject to sudden 

 paroxysms of unprovoked fury, rushing and charging 

 with inconceivable fierceness animals, stones, bushes 

 — in short, any object that comes in their way." 



Except, however, upon one occasion, when Anders- 

 son was badly injured one night and nearly lost his 

 life as the result of closely approaching and throw- 

 ing a stone at a black rhinoceros which he had pre- 

 viously wounded, he does not seem to have met 

 with any further adventures or suffered any incon- 

 venience from the unprovoked fury of any other 

 individual of the species. 



About the same time that Andersson was travel- 

 ling and hunting in Damaraland and Ovampoland, 

 Baldwin was leading an almost precisely similar life 

 first in Zululand and Amatongaland, and later on in 

 the countries lying to the north and north-west of 

 the Transvaal as far as the Zambesi river and Lake 

 N'gami. Baldwin must have encountered a con- 

 siderable number of rhinoceroses of both the black 

 and the white species, and records the shooting of a 



