120 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



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 I arrived 

 in East Africa a surveyor was charged by a rhinoceros 

 entirely without provocation; he was caught and killed. 

 Chanler's companion 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 Hohnel, 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 

 order to prevent mischief. Under such circumstances it is 

 not to be expected that men will take too many chances 

 when face to face with a creature whose actions are threat- 

 ening and whose intentions it is absolutely impossible to 

 divine. In fact, I do not see how the rhinoceros can be per- 

 manently preserved, save in very out-of-the-way places or 

 in regular game reserves. There is enough interest and ex- 

 citement in the pursuit to attract every eager young hunter, 

 and, indeed, very many eager old hunters; and the beast's 

 stupidity, curiosity, and truculence make up a combination 

 of qualities which inevitably tend to insure its destruction. 



As we brought home the whole body of this rhinoceros, 

 and as I had put into it eight bullets, five from the Win- 

 chester and three from the Holland, I was able to make 

 a tolerably fair comparison between the two. With the 

 full-jacketed bullets of the Winchester I had mortally 

 wounded the animal; it would have died in a short time, 

 and it was groggy when it came out of the brush in its 



