TRACKERS OF THE CHERINGANI HILLS 



HUNTING THE RHINOCEROS 1 IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA FOR 



CONSTRUCTION IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF A GROUP 



OF THIS FAST-DISAPPEARING SPECIES 



By W. S. Rainsford 



Photographs by Jenness Richardson 



i i T F I could only meet that great bull elephant, the bull of my dreams, the 

 I mighty tusker who will some day be seen by some lucky mortal, hide 

 *■ he never so cunningly, I think I could scarcely shoot him until I 

 had hugged him for joy." This remark shows the enthusiasm and keen 

 determination of one of our persistent hunters and naturalists. Little know 

 the people as they gaze in some natural history museum at some fine beast 

 or bird, labeled with a half understood name, coming from a half unknown 

 land — little do these people know at what cost paid in adventurous human 

 life the stuffed specimen they admire is presented to them. Hunters, 

 explorers, collectors, soldiers, civil servants, missionaries — the African 

 sphinx follows her Grecian cousin's example and may strangle them if they 

 persist in the attempt to unravel her riddles. 



The ideal African hunter or expedition leader should have the endurance 

 of a man under forty years old, should have a copper-lined stomach and be 

 immune to tick, tsetse and mosquito. Climatic conditions should mean 

 nothing to him. He should prefer the borderland of a swamp or even its 

 pestiferous depths to the breezy upland if only he can win the one thing 

 he is after. 



British East Africa has had many secrets wrested from her in the past 



i Editorial Note: — The American Museum does not possess a group of the CDmmon 

 black rhinoceros of Africa. In face of the fact that this rhino like the buffalo and zebra is 

 positively doomed to extermination in the near future because an annoyancs to settlers in the 

 country, it seemed advisable to take steps to get material for such a group while rhinos of 

 maximum saze are still to be found. 



As to big-game conditions in British East Africa, unusual interest attaches to the follow- 

 ing quoted from a recent publication of the New York Zoological Society, Our Vanished Wild 

 Life, by William T. Hornaday: 



"As matters stand to-day in British East Africa, the big game of the country outside 

 the three preserves is absolutely certain to disappear in about one-fourth the time that it 

 took South Africa to accomplish the same result. The reasons are obvious: superior accessi- 

 bility, more deadly rifles, expert professional guides and a widespread craze for killing big 

 game. 



" . . .With care and economy, British East Africa should furnish good hunting for two 

 centuries . . . Mr. Arthur Jordan has seen much of the big game of British East Africa, and 

 its killing. Him I asked to tell me how long, in Ms opinion, the big game of that territory 

 will last outside of the game preserves as it is now being killed. He said, 'Oh, it will last a 

 long time. I think it will last fifteen years.' 



"Fifteen years! And this for the richest big-game fauna of any one spot in the whole 

 world, which Nature has been several million years in developing and placing there! . . . . 



"The bag limit ... is ruinously extravagant It is awful to think that for a petty sum 



[$250.00] any man may buy the right to kill 300 head of hoofed and horned animals of 44 

 species, not counting the carnivorous animals that also may be killed. That bag limit should 

 immediately be reduced 75 per cent." 



