462 A STRANGE STORY. 



while abandoning himself to this anti-Sybaritic indulgence, he heaves 

 a hoarse groan of satisfaction, which conducts the hunter to his 

 retreat. The Abyssinians pursue him on horseback. Some attack 

 him with arrows or with musketry ; others, and these are the boldest, 

 leap from their steeds at the moment the rhinoceros leaps upon him, 

 and hamstring him with their sabres. The huge quadruped falls 

 immediately, and becomes an easy prey to his aggressors.* In South 

 Africa the Kaffirs and the Hottentots display an equal audacity in 

 attacking this formidable foe. They dare to confront him with their 

 sharp knives alone, and generally with success, though a weak thrust 

 or a wrong aim would entail upon them a sudden, swift, and terrible 

 death. 



Mr. Cooper Rose, in his " Sketch of South Africa," celebrates an 

 aged chief who had won a well-deserved renown by the most extra- 

 ordinary instance of courage and presence of mind. He was out 

 a-hunting. A rhinoceros broke abruptly from the covert of a dense 

 thicket, and so near to him, that the Kaffir easily leaped upon his back. 

 The furious animal immediately dashed through the jungle, beat the 

 earth with his horn, roared with rage, and used his utmost exertions 

 to dismount his unwelcome rider. In this he would have undoubtedly 

 succeeded, and the negro must have perished, if happily the kross, or 

 sheepskin mantle of the latter, had not been caught in the bushes. 

 Mad with fury, the rhinoceros threw himself upon it, and while he was 

 busy rending it in fragments the Kaffir leaped lightly to the ground, 

 and saved himself in the deep recesses of the forest. 



* Mansfield Parkyns, " Life in Abyssinia." See some interesting details in Major 

 Harris's " Sport in the Western Highlands of Ethiopia." 



