With Flashlight ami Rifle 



the skin has to be prepared with the greatest care, for 

 the hairs grow so loosely that, with the least inattention, 

 they are sure to come out. 



Xow we have to work up the mountain-slope, often 

 painfully in the burning sun, on hands and feet. The 

 rocks are already quite hot. Lizards and geckos eye us 

 curiously, instantly disappearing in the grass or in holes. 

 The higher we climb the more plants and grasses we 



O I O 



find that are not entirely withered by the sun. The eye 

 ol the hunter soon perceives among the rocks great 

 accumulations of clung, the nature of which tells of the 

 presence of numerous rock-badgers. And, in truth, this 

 mountain wilderness is thickly inhabited by those miniature 

 hoofed animals of which the Bible speaks, and which 

 zoology has, oddly enough, to class as relatives of the 

 mighty rhinoceros. . . . 



Pate has arranged things very differently for these 

 incongruous cousins. Thanks to their size and strength, 



O O 



the rhinoceroses ruled their broad lands for hundreds and 

 thousands of years ; no foe of equal girth challenged them 

 in the struggle for existence. But at first, with the help 

 ot the poisoned arrow, and nowadays with the help of 

 little bits of metal only some few millimetres in size, which 

 are landed in the body of the beast from a long distance, 

 man has succeeded in well-nigh decimating this leviathan ; 

 and soon he will have annihilated him ! 



And thus the poor relations of the rhinoceroses, the 

 rock-badgers, who live in inaccessible rocky deserts, have 

 had a better destiny. Living like rabbits, multiplying 

 endlessly, timid and cautious the old ones, at any rate, 



604 



