212 HUNTING IN THE JUNGLE. 



Siam the horns are so highly prized that the king, 

 wishing to especially honor Louis XIV., sent him six, 

 as the rarest treasures he possessed. 



There is one point on which naturalists cannot agree 

 in regard to him, and that is whether in Abyssinia he 

 is really used to replace the ox in field labor. How- 

 ever, this much I know, that there is a vast country 

 south of Egypt and bordering on the Nile, inhabited 

 by an ancient race which has clung to life through 

 all the vicissitudes that have visited this continent. 

 Driven back, first by the invaders from the South, and 

 then by the conquerors of Egypt, they owe their preser- 

 vation to the rocky deserts among which they retired, 

 and over the possession of which no one cared to dis- 

 pute. The}'j|iKJ^ between the first and second cataracts 

 of the Nile!B||P^ have preserved many of the charac- 

 teristics of the old Egyptian type. Their figures are 

 tall and elegant, their limbs well formed, but generally 

 slender, their coloring delicate, and the slight amount 

 of hair upon their faces is more than compensated for 

 by the bushy growth upon the top of their heads. This 

 silky covering is made an even greater protection against 

 the hot sun of their country by their habit of dressing 

 it heavily with a pomade in the shape with which the 

 old Egyptian monuments have made us familiar. Here 

 the rhinoceros certainly fulfils the mission of the ox, as 

 I can testify from actual observation in this home of 

 the lion, the panther, the giraffe, the bear, and the 



