116 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 défour, 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 rhinocerosés 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, — 
