CHAP, x NOTED BOER HUNTERS 179 



culty of understanding the true character of the 

 African black or prehensile-lipped rhinoceros ; but 

 perhaps I ought to have said " my own " difficulty, 

 for never having had my life seriously endangered 

 by any one of the many animals of this species 

 which I met with at a time when they were still 

 fairly numerous in the interior of South Africa, I 

 have always found it very difficult to credit the vast 

 majority of these stupidly inquisitive but dull-sighted 

 brutes with the vindictiveness and ferocity of dis- 

 position that has often been attributed to the whole 

 race. I am, it must be understood, now speak- 

 ing only of the black rhinoceros in Africa to the 

 south of the Zambesi. In other parts of the 

 continent I have had no experience of these 

 animals. 



In Southern Africa the black as well as the 

 white rhinoceros has been almost absolutely exter- 

 minated during the last sixty years. During that 

 period, thousands upon thousands of these animals 

 have been killed, at a cost to human life so trifling, 

 that I submit it is impossible to contend that, speak- 

 ing generally, the hunting and shooting of black 

 rhinoceroses was an exceptionally dangerous under- 

 taking. 



When a young man I was personally acquainted 

 with several of the most noted of the old Boer 

 hunters Petrus Jacobs, Jan Viljoen, Martinus 

 Swart, Michael Engelbreght, and others who 

 were amongst the first white men to penetrate to 

 the wondrous hunting-grounds beyond the Lim- 

 popo ; but I never heard of any Boer hunter having 

 been killed by a black rhinoceros. 



Amongst the early English hunters, who were 

 probably more reckless and less experienced than 

 the Boers, a few accidents certainly happened, but, 

 considering the number of rhinoceroses they killed, 

 they must have been favoured with extraordinarily 



