LARGE GAME OF CAPE COLONY. 287 



its mouth, Barrow speaks of it as being abundant. 

 The last specimen seems, according to Gordon 

 Cumming, to have been seen as late as i 849 in the 

 Addo Bush. In the latter half of the seventeenth 

 century, and during a greater portion of the eighteenth, 

 this rhinoceros roamed freely over the whole of Cape 

 Colony, where the pasture suited ; and its Dutch 

 name rhenoster yet remains on many a hill, river 

 and fountain. 



In 1851, there lived on the Great Fish River 

 an old Boer, named Bezuidenhout, who in his 

 youth had killed many rhinoceroses on the eastern 

 borders of the Colony, and in Kaffraria itself. The 

 old man at that time was about eighty years of 

 age, and still affectionately retained, long after his 

 more civilised fellow-Dutchmen in the Colony had 

 discarded them, his immense long "roer " (elephant 

 gun) and "veldt broeks " (literally, field breeches) 

 the ancient garments of leather worn by the old- 

 world Dutchmen of the Cape. Many a good hunting 

 story could the old man tell, and amongst them was 

 one in which the " veldt broeks " had played an 

 important part. One day, when out shooting, 

 Bezuidenhout was charged by a wounded rhinoceros, 

 which caught him with its horn between the legs. 

 The Boer, miraculously, was unhurt, and managed 

 to cling to the animal's head, while it rushed madly 

 onwards for nearly a mile, as the old man always 

 stoutly swore ; at length, in entering a grove of 

 stunted trees, the frightened rider managed to clutch 

 a branch, and hoist himself out of harm's way. The 

 old man always attributed his wonderful escape (for 

 he suffered only a few bruises) to the strength and 

 thickness of his leather breeches. The story seems 



