180 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



good luck to have got off as cheaply as they did, 

 if anything like a large proportion of these animals 

 had habitually attacked them without provocation, 

 as soon as they saw or scented them, or even made 

 a point of charging immediately they were interfered 

 with. 



During his wonderful hunting expedition to the 

 interior of South Africa in 1836-37, Captain (after- 

 wards Sir Cornwallis) Harris met with an extra- 

 ordinary number of rhinoceroses of both the black and 

 the white species. He shot great numbers of both, 

 but never seems himself to have been in any serious 

 danger from a black rhinoceros, though one of his 

 Hottentot servants was knocked over by one of 

 these animals, and his companion, Mr. Richardson, 

 seems to have had a very narrow escape from 

 another. 



Speaking of this incident, Harris says : " My com- 

 panion the next morning achieved a ' gentle passage 

 of arms ' with the very duplicate of this gentle- 

 man ; l but his antagonist could not be prevailed 

 upon to surrender to superior weapons, until it had 

 considerably disfigured with the point of its horn 

 the stock of the rifle employed in its reduction. 

 Aroused from a siesta in a thick bush by the smart- 

 ing of a gunshot wound, the exasperated beast pur- 

 sued its human assailant so closely, that Richardson 

 was fain in self-defence to discharge the second barrel 

 dov/n its open throat ! " 



In a further paragraph Harris wrote: "As we 

 advanced, the species (the black rhinoceros) became 

 daily more and more abundant, and I shall hardly 

 gain credence when I assert that in the valley of 

 the Limpopo specimens were so numerous that 

 on arriving in the afternoon at our new ground 

 it was no uncommon thing to perceive a dozen 

 horned snouts protruded at once from bushes in the 



1 Another rhinoceros shot by Captain Harris. 



