THE RHINOCEROS OF THE LADO 471 



gotten our first two. Marching through likely country 

 burnt, this time we came across the tracks of three rhino, 

 two big and one small, and followed them through the 

 black ashes. It was an intricate and difficult piece of 

 tracking, for the trail wound hither and thither and was 

 criss-crossed by others; but Kongoni and Kassitura grad- 

 ually untangled the maze, found where the beasts had 

 drunk at a small pool that morning, and then led us to 

 where they were lying asleep under some thorn-trees. It 

 was about eleven o'clock. As the bull rose Kermit gave 

 him a fatal shot with his beloved Winchester. He gal- 

 loped 'full speed toward us, not charging, but in a mad 

 panic of terror and bewilderment; and with a bullet from 

 the Holland I brought him down in his tracks only a few 

 yards away. The cow went off at a gallop. The calf, 

 a big creature, half grown, hung about for some time, and 

 came up quite close, but was finally frightened away by 

 shouting and hand-clapping. Some cow-herons were 

 round these rhino; and the head and body of the bull 

 looked as if it had been splashed with whitewash. 



It was an old bull, with a short, stubby, worn-down 

 horn. It was probably no heavier than a big ordinary 

 rhino bull such as we had shot on the Sotik, and its horns 

 were no larger, and the front and rear ones were of the 

 same proportions relatively to each other. But the mis- 

 shapen head was much larger, and the height seemed 

 greater because of the curious hump. This fleshy hump 

 is not over the high dorsal vertebrae, but just forward of 

 them, on the neck itself, and has no connection with the 

 spinal column. The square-mouthed rhinoceros of South 

 Africa is always described as being very much bigger than 

 the common prehensile-lipped African rhinoceros, and as 

 carrying much longer horns. But the square-mouthed 

 rhinos we saw and killed in the Lado did not differ from 

 the common kind in size and horn development as much 

 as we had been led to expect; although on an average they 

 were undoubtedly larger, and with bigger horns, yet there 



