ADVEXTURES OF THE CHASE. 420 



and for a moment I must, as I believe, have lost consciousness ; 

 1 have at least veiy nidistinct notions of what afterwards took 

 place. All I remen^ber is, that when I raised my head, I heard a 

 furious snorting and plunging amongst the neighbouring bushes. 

 I now arose, though with great difficulty, and made my way in 

 the best manner I was a})le towards a large tree near at hand 

 for shelter ; but this precaution was needless ; the beast, for 

 the time at least, showed no inclination further to molest me. 

 Either in the melee, or owing to the confusion caused by its 

 wounds, it had lost sight of me, or felt satisfied with the 

 revenge it had taken. Be that as it may, I escaped with life, 

 though sadly wounded and severely bruised, in which disabled 

 state I had great difficulty in getting back to my screen.' 



TJie rhinoceros is hunted for its flesh, its hide (which is manu- 

 factured into the best and hardest leather that can be imagined), 

 and its horns, which, being capable of a high polish, fetch at 

 the Cape a higher price than ordinary elephant ivory. It is exten- 

 sively used in the manufacture of sword-handles, drinking-cups, 

 ramrods for rifles, and a variety of other purposes. Among 

 Oriental princes, goblets made of rhinoceros horn are in high 

 esteem, as they are supposed to have the virtue of detecting 

 poison by causing the deadly liquid to ferment till it flows over 

 the rim, or, as some say, to split the cup. 



The number of rhinoceroses destroyed annually in South 

 Africa is very considerable. Messrs. Oswell and Varden killed 

 in one year no less than eighty-nine, and in one journey, An- 

 dersson shot, single-handed, nearly two-thirds of this number. 

 It is thus not to be wondered at that the rhinoceros, which 

 formerly ranged as far as the Cape, is now but seldom found to 

 the south of the tropic. 



The single-horned Indian rhinoceros was already known to 

 the ancients, and not unfrequently doomed to bleed in the 

 Roman amphitheatres. One which was sent to King Emanuel 

 of Portugal in the year 1513, and presented by him to the Pope, 

 had the honour to be pictured in a woodcut by no less an 

 artist than Albrecht Diirer himself. Latterly, rhinoceroses 

 have much more frequently been sent to Europe, particularly 

 the Asiatic species, and all the chief zoological gardens possess 

 specimens of the unwieldy creature. 



In its native haunts, the Indian rhinoceros leads a tranquil 



