x RHINOCEROSES ATTACKING CARAVANS 193 



off to run away from the disagreeable smell, 

 suddenly find itself confronted by another portion 

 of the caravan, it will not turn back, but rush 

 snorting through the line, sometimes perhaps 

 injuring a man in its passage. It is, I think, 

 owing to the fact that travellers, traders, and 

 hunters in Hast Africa have always employed 

 very large numbers of porters, who marched in 

 single file in a line often extending to several 

 hundred yards in length, that incidents of this 

 kind have been so frequent in that country. But 

 when a black rhinoceros just rushes through a long 

 line of porters without singling out and following 

 any particular man, I think such a proceeding is 

 more the result of panic than anything else. My 

 view is that the wind blowing obliquely across 

 the line being taken by a caravan may reach a 

 rhinoceros lying or standing some distance away. 

 This animal at once takes alarm and runs off, at 

 first perhaps at right angles to the direction from 

 which the wind is blowing ; but on again turning 

 up wind, as rhinoceroses almost invariably do, it 

 comes right on to another portion of the straggling 

 line of porters. Confronted by this line of men, 

 whom it had at first tried to avoid, it will probably 

 not turn back, but rather charge through them and 

 continue its flight. The sight of the black rhinoceros 

 is certainly very bad, and in cases where these 

 animals have charged against waggons in South 

 Africa, and trains on the Uganda Railway, it is 

 difficult to say whether they were animated by 

 pure bad temper or ran against these obstacles 

 because they suddenly saw them moving right 

 across their path, when they were endeavouring 

 to escape from some other danger. 



Upon three occasions during 1873 black 

 rhinoceroses came close up to my camp at night, 

 snorting loudly, and upon one occasion, as I shall 



o 



