x AN UNPROVOKED CHARGE 187 



thighs of one of them, throwing him up in the air. 

 Fortunately no bones were broken and the injured 

 man quickly recovered from his wounds. Another 

 instance of the same kind happened in the ex- 

 perience of my old hunting companion, George 

 Wood. One day, as he and two companions- 

 David Napier and, I think, James Gifford were 

 riding along on elephant spoor in Mashunaland, a 

 black rhinoceros suddenly charged through them, 

 overturning Napier's horse and throwing it and its 

 rider to the ground. Napier was not hurt, but I 

 forget whether or no the horse was killed. These 

 two incidents serve to show that in the parts of 

 Africa in which my own experience was gained, 

 certain black rhinoceroses were undoubtedly dan- 

 gerous and aggressive ; but such animals were, I 

 am convinced, exceptional. I do not think that 

 rhinoceroses were ever so plentiful on the northern 

 watershed between the Limpopo and Zambesi 

 rivers as Harris found them in the valley of the 

 former river in 1837, but nevertheless in the early 

 'seventies, throughout all the uninhabited portions of 

 the territory now known' as Southern Rhodesia, 

 rhinoceroses of both the black and the white species 

 were very plentiful. The countries through which 

 I hunted in 1872 and 1873 wer e practically virgin 

 ground, as the Matabele were then only just 

 beginning to acquire firearms in any quantity. As 

 I have recorded in my book A Himters Wanderings? 

 when hunting elephants during those two years I 

 encountered almost daily one or more prehensile- 

 lipped rhinoceroses, often seeing five, six, or even 

 eight in one day, and in addition to these, I met 

 with many of the square-mouthed or white species as 

 well. As I was hunting elephants for a living and 

 could not therefore afford to run the risk of disturb- 

 ing these valuable animals by firing indiscriminately 



1 First published in 1881. 



