ELEPHANT, TAPIR, HYRAX, RHINOCEROS 163 



■■■ -- -it ■ • « •-_-.'•■ . ■ ■ •'■•. ...... .."" . * 



KI.ACK AFRICAN RHINOCEROSES 

 .V splendid snapshot t no Ma ■ Aft an rhii •■ us taken on the open veldt. They were afterwards shot by the party 



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white rhinoceros has never been encountered by any other traveler in Central Africa seems to 

 -how that the animal is either very rare in those districts, or that it has an exceedingly limited range. 



In the early years of the nineteenth century the square-mouthed or white rhinoceros was 

 found in large numbers over the whole of South Africa from the Orange River to the Zambesi, 

 except in the waterless portions of the Kalahari Desert, or those parts of the country which are 

 covered with rugged stony hills or dense jungle. 



Speaking of his journey in 1837 through the western part of what is now the Transvaal 

 Colony, Captain (afterwards Sir) Cornwallis Harris wrote: " On our way from the waggons to a 

 hill not half a mile distant, we counted no less than twenty-two of the white species of rhinoceros, 

 and were compelled in self-defense to slaughter four. On one occasion I was besieged in a bush 

 by three at once, and had no little difficulty in beating off the assailants." Even so lately as 

 thirty years' ago the white rhinoceros was still to be met with in fair numbers in Ovampoland and 

 other districts of Western South Africa, whilst 

 it was quite plentiful in all the uninhabited 

 parts of Eastern South Africa from Zululand 

 to the Zambesi. In 1872 and 1873, whilst 

 elephant-hunting in the uninhabited parts of 

 Matabililand, I encountered white rhinoceroses 

 almost daily, and often saw several in one day. 

 At the present time, however, unless it should 

 prove to be numerous in some as yet unex- 

 plored districts of North Central Africa, this 

 strange and interesting animal must be counted 

 one of the rarest of existing mammals, and in 

 Southern Africa I fear it must soon become 

 extinct. A few still exist amongst the wild .*.'•'•- --?•'• •■• •' *V. ■._-'-.- "v.. A 



loquat groves of Northern Mashonaland, and fku ' ** c - B - a ** ,h "t < s 't ■ 



there are also a few surviving in Zululand ; but O N E O F T H E S AM E RH I N O CER OSES D E AD 



I fear that even With the most rigid protection This picture gives some idea of the size of the commonest surviving speues 



