X PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 185 



good many of these animals in the most matter-of- 

 fact way. From cover to cover of the very interest- 

 ing book he wrote describing his hunting adventures, 

 African Htmtmg from Natal to the Zambesi, he 

 never speaks of the black rhinoceros as being a 

 savage and ferocious animal, given to sudden 

 paroxysms of fury, nor does he ever appear to have 

 thought it a more danoferous animal to attack than 

 one of the white species. Indeed, on several 

 occasions he simply records the fact that he shot a 

 rhinoceros, without saying to which species it 

 belonged. One rhinoceros came at him after hav- 

 ing been wounded, but was stopped by a shot in the 

 forehead. As this animal — a cow with a very small 

 calf — is spoken of as having a very long horn, it 

 was probably a white rhinoceros, which would have 

 charged with its nose close to the ground, and would 

 therefore have been much easier to kill with a shot 

 in the forehead than one of the black species, whose 

 head would necessarily have been held somewhat 

 higher owing to the shortness of its neck. 



My own personal experience of the black 

 rhinoceros in Southern Africa compels me to 

 believe that, although a small proportion of animals 

 of this species may have been excessively ill- 

 tempered, and were always ready to charge any- 

 thing and everything they saw moving, and even to 

 hunt a human being by scent, that was never the 

 character of the great majority of these animals. 

 At any rate, the rage of the black rhinoceros in the 

 countries to the south of the Zambesi has been 

 singularly impotent and ineffective. In the thirty- 

 five years which elapsed between the date of 

 Harris's travels through Bechwanaland and the 

 north-western portions of what is now the Trans- 

 vaal Colony and my own first visit to South Africa 

 in 1 87 1, thousands of black rhinoceroses must have 

 been killed ; a very large proportion of them by 



