276 A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



a grass diet, is reported to have remarked, " on tasting 

 the unwonted food : ' it may be eaten, but it isn't 

 good.' " The only real use of the rhino is to provide 

 thrills for big-game hunters and episodes with which 

 to harrow the feelings and compel the admiration 

 of friends in England. It is the very rarest of 

 exceptions for a " safari " to return from a shooting 

 expedition without a rhinoceros having provided a 

 hairbreadth escape to some member of the party, 

 black or white. It may be of some consolation to the 

 intending voyager to know that the breadth of the hair 

 will practically always be on the right side. During all 

 the years of big-game shooting in British East Africa, 

 and after all the many hundreds of specimens which 

 have been slain — 707 were accounted for in 19 10 and 

 191 1 alone — the fatal or even serious accidents can be 

 counted on the fingers of one hand. The rhinoceros 

 is large, the rhinoceros is blind, he looks very fierce, 

 and he has got to go somewhere when disturbed, which, 

 like most animals, is almost invariably up wind. The 

 consequence of these facts is that a horrid great 

 monster, sleeping under a tree, gets the wind of a 

 caravan and naturally rushes up wind towards and 

 through it, and no one can deny that he looks most 

 objectionable. As a proof, however, that he is not 

 really vicious lies the fact that it is the rarest of 

 occasions on which he retraces his steps ; almost 

 invariably his initial rush goes straight on. Mr. 

 Stigand, in a very carefully reasoned argument, comes 

 to the conclusion that one in every 250 rhino charges 

 with vicious intent. In common with everyone who 

 has passed much time travelling about the Protectorate, 

 I have seen a good many hundred rhinosceros, but only 

 once have I seen a rhino — or in this case a pair of them — 



