WHITE RHINOCEROS 41 



" In the country to the north-east of Matabililand, between the 

 Sebakwe and the Manyami rivers, white rhinoceroses were still fairly 

 numerous in 1878, when I once saw five together; and it was not till 

 after 1880 that their numbers were seriously reduced. About that 

 time rhinoceros-horns of all sorts and sizes increased in value ; and 

 as ivory was scarce in South Africa, the traders in Matabililand 

 employed natives to shoot rhinoceroses for the sake of their horns 

 and hides. 



" One trader alone supplied 400 Matabili native hunters with guns 

 and ammunition, and between 1880 and 1884 his store always con- 

 tained piles of rhinoceros-horns, although they were constantly being 

 sold to other traders and carried south to Kimberley on their way to 

 England. What caused this demand for rhinoceros-horn from 1880 

 to 1885 I am unaware; but whatever it may have been, it sounded 

 the death-knell of white and black rhinoceros alike in all the country 

 that came within reach of these Matabili hunters. The Manyami 

 river was, however, looked upon as the boundary of Lo Bengula's 

 dominions to the north-east, so that none of his people dared hunt 

 in small parties much to the east of the lower Umfuli river, and 

 it thus came to pass that the white rhinoceroses inhabiting a small 

 tract of country between the Angwa and the Manyami, though they 

 were occasionally killed by the natives of the surrounding districts, 

 were not systematically slaughtered like their brethren to the west of 

 the Umfuli river. In 1886 two Boer hunters, Karl Weyand and Jan 

 Engelbrecht, shot ten white rhinoceroses in this tract, while five more 

 were killed the same year by some Fingo hunters resident in Matabili- 

 land. A few escaped, of which in the following year I saw the tracks 

 of two or three, but did not come across any of the animals themselves, 

 though one of my waggon-drivers shot a big bull. 



" When on my way from Matabililand to the Manyami river in 

 1882, I shot a bull and a cow, letting their calf go. Neither had good 

 horns, but I kept the skull and head-skin of the bull, which are now in 

 the South African Museum at Cape Town. These were the last white 

 rhinoceroses I saw alive. 



" In August 1892 Messrs. R. T. Coryndon and A. Eyre, when about 

 100 miles north-west of Salisbury, came suddenly on a family of 

 white rhinoceroses, bull, cow, and calf. The two former, although 

 wounded, escaped, but the calf was killed by a stray bullet. While 

 following the wounded animals the next day Messrs. Coryndon and 

 Eyre came on a cow, accompanied by a half-grown and a very young 

 calf. The cow was shot and the small calf captured alive ; but it was 



