i88 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



at any other kind of game, unless I really wanted 

 meat, I seldom killed rhinoceroses. But had these 

 animals been valuable, and had I been hunting them 

 for a living instead of elephants, I think that by 

 watching at their drinking-places, and following up 

 fresh tracks, as well as shooting all those I came 

 across casually, 1 might easily have killed a hundred of 

 each species during those two years. During each of 

 the years 1874, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1882, 1883, 

 1885, and 1887, I came across black rhinoceroses, 

 but never in any one of those years in anything like 

 the numbers I had met with these animals in 1872 

 and 1873. 



In the country to the north-east of Matabeleland, 

 between the Sebakwe and the Hanyani rivers, 

 both black and white rhinoceroses were still fairly 

 numerous in 1878, during which year I one day saw 

 five of the latter all together, and it was only after 

 1880 that the numbers of both species commenced 

 to be seriously reduced in this part of South Africa. 

 About that time rhinoceros horns — of all sorts and 

 sizes — attained a considerable commercial value, 

 probably through some freak of fashion in knife- 

 handles or combs or what not in Europe. But what- 

 ever was the cause of it, this sudden rise in the 

 value of small rhinoceros horns sounded the death- 

 knell of these creatures in the interior of South 

 Africa. By the year 1880, ivory had become very 

 scarce in that portion of the continent, and the 

 traders in Matabeleland then for the first time 

 began to employ native hunters to shoot rhinoceroses 

 for the sake of their horns — no matter of what 

 length — and their hides, which latter were made into 

 waggon whips and sjamboks. One trader alone told 

 me that he had supplied four hundred Matabele 

 hunters with guns and ammunition, and between 1880 

 and 1884 his large store always contained great piles 

 of rhinoceros horns — of all sorts and sizes, often the 



