CH. v] DANGKUS OF UHINO-HUNTING 117 



ground, a circular spot where the earth had been all 

 trampled up and kicked about, according to the custom 

 of rhinoceroses ; they return day after day to such 

 places to deposit their dung, which is then kicked about 

 with the hind feet. As with all our otlier specimens, 

 the skin was taken off and sent back to the National 

 Museum. The stomach was tilled with leaves and 

 twigs, this kind of rliinoceros browsing on tlie tips of 

 the branches by means of its hooked, prehensile 

 upper hp. 



Now, I did not want to kill this rhinoceros, and I am 

 not certain that it really intended to charge us. It may 

 very well be that if we had stood firm it would, after 

 much threatening and snorting, ha\ e turned and made 

 off". Veteran hunters like Selous could, I doubt not, 

 have afforded to wait and see what happened. But I 

 let it get witliin forty yards, and it still showed every 

 symptom of meaning mischief, and at a shorter range 1 

 could not have been sure of stopping it in time. Often 

 under such circumstances the rhino does not mean to 

 charge at all, and is acting in a spirit of truculent and 

 dull curiosity ; but often, when its motions and actions 

 are indistinguishable from those of an animal which does 

 not mean mischief, it turns out that a given rhino does 

 mean mischief. A year before 1 arrived in East Africa 

 a surveyor was charged by a rhinoceros entirely without 

 provocation ; he was caught and killed. Chanler's com- 

 panion on his long expedition, the Austrian Von Hohnel, 

 was very severely wounded by a rhino, and nearly died. 

 The animal charged through the line of march of the 

 safari, and then deliberately turned, hunted down Von 

 H()hnel, and tossed him. Again and again there have 

 been such experiences, and again and again hunters who 

 did not wish to kill rhinos have been forced to do so in 



