With Flashlight and Rifle -* 



who delivered the fatal shot and brought down the game. 

 It is a very different matter, and far more dignified, to go 

 on a hunting expedition unassisted. 



It frequently happens that a rhinoceros scents the 

 position of several of the armed natives ; fire is opened 

 on him, and at the last moment the animal, already 

 mortally wounded, finds he is incapable of attacking any 

 of the marksmen, and so rushes snorting past them, to 

 be finished off sooner or later. Such situations give rise 

 to the fairy tales of those wonderful sidewise leaps a 

 feat of which I could well imagine a toreador to be 

 capable on the flat sanded ground of the arena, even 

 when attacked by a rhinoceros, but which I shall never 

 see performed by a European unless he has been 

 practised in bullfights. 



I have often heard of men being gored and tossed 

 into the air by these animals. The list of deaths under 

 such circumstances is a long one, and quite a number of 

 Europeans in the districts traversed by me lost their 

 lives in this manner. 



A few years ago I met an English medical officer 

 who had been hastily called to a case of serious illness. 

 Shortly before our meeting one of his Askari, a Sudanese, 

 had been gored and tossed by a rhinoceros (which had 

 been shot at by the whole of the little caravan). The 

 animal's horn had penetrated deep into the unfortunate 

 man's abdomen. The wound was terrible, and the state 

 of the patient seemed as hopeless to the doctor as it did 

 to a mere layman like myself. As I intended to encamp 

 for some time near by, the doctor earnestly entreated me 



21 2 



