u6 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



usage, and that, as we had not found the elephants, they were 

 not above breaking their fast upon quagga, giraffe, or even 

 rhinoceros. I tried to persuade them that elephant was the 

 only dish worthy of them or likely to fill those almost bottom- 

 less cavities to which they had alluded ; that we might have 

 better luck the next day, and that they might put off dining 

 till then. If you wish to be successful in hunting for large 

 tusks, it is as well to keep your men on an elephantine diet and 

 not pamper them with dainties, or they become lazy and care- 

 less in seeking the larger game. Whether on this particular 

 occasion I was unusually tender-hearted, or their appeals were 

 too touching, I do not remember ; but whilst with my very 

 poor stock of Sechuana words I was trying to explain my views, 

 in an open glade of the forest through which we were passing, 

 their hungry eyes fell upon two rhinoceroses of the keitloa 

 variety, and the eager cry of ' Ugh chukuru, mynaar ! ' the last 

 word a corruption of the Dutch mynheer, lengthened plain- 

 tively into a kind of prayer was too much for me, and I dis- 

 mounted to do their pleasure. Fifty yards before the animals 

 ran a scanty fringe of dwarf thorn-bushes, on outliers of which 

 they were feeding away from us. I made a long detour, and 

 came out a hundred yards in front of them, the little scrubby 

 cover lying between us. A handful of sand thrown into the 

 air gave the direction of the wind ; worming my way I gained 

 the thorns, and, lying flat, waited for a side chance. 



The rhinoceroses were now within twenty yards of me, but 

 head on, and in that position they are not to be killed except 

 at very close quarters, for the horns completely guard the brain, 

 which is small and lies very low in the head. Though alone 

 on the present occasion, I was travelling with the best rhinoceros 

 shot I ever knew, and his audacity, and our constant success 

 and impunity alone and together in carrying on the war against 

 these brutes, had perhaps made me despise them too much. I 

 had so frequently seen their ugly noses, when within eight or 

 ten yards of the gun, turn, tempted by a twig or tuft of grass 

 to the right or left, and the wished-for broadside thus given, 



