TICK-BIRDS 189 



spoils of over a hundred of these animals at one time, 

 although they were constantly being sold to other 

 traders and carried south to Kimberley on their 

 way to Europe. I do not know for a fact that all 

 these rhinoceros horns were sent to Europe. They 

 may have been shipped to China or India. 



Although many hundreds of native hunters — 

 poorly armed with smooth-bore muskets for the 

 most part — must have taken part in the practical 

 extermination of both the black and the white 

 rhinoceros, throughout all the uninhabited tracts of 

 country lying between the high plateau of Matabele- 

 land and the Zambesi river, as far as I know no single 

 man was either killed or injured in the process, 

 although they must have killed between them at least 

 a thousand black rhinoceroses alone during the five 

 years before 1886. After that there were very few 

 rhinoceroses left to shoot to the west of the Umfuli 

 river, beyond which the Matabele hunters seldom 

 ventured. 



Black rhinoceroses always appeared to me to be 

 very dull of sight, but quick of hearing and ex- 

 cessively keen scented, and I have never known an 

 instance of one not immediately running off on getting 

 my wind. I have often seen them, too, take alarm 

 and run off when warned by the tick -birds that so 

 often accompanied them, although they had neither 

 seen nor smelt me. These tick- birds, which may 

 often be seen accompanying buffaloes and other 

 animals as well as rhinoceroses, always flutter about 

 and give well -understood warning cries on the 

 approach of a human being. On the other hand, I 

 have seen many black rhinoceroses, when suddenly 

 disturbed by the noise made by my Kafirs and 

 myself, as we walked past them, come trotting up 

 towards us snorting loudly. Such animals had not 

 got our wind or they would have run off — at least 

 I think so. Whenever rhinoceroses came trotting 



