250 THE TERRIBLE. 



a thicket where Thackwray was reloading his rifle, it 

 cauo-ht sisfht of him, and in an instant hurled him to the 

 earth, thrusting one of its tusks through his thigh. It 

 then caught the wretched man in its trunk, and elevating 

 him in the air, dashed him with great force upon the 

 ground, kneeling and trampling upon him, and as it were 

 kneading his crushed and flattened corpse into the dust, 

 with an implacable fury. The remains, when discovered, 

 presented a most appalling spectacle." * More recently, 

 another ivory-hunter, named Wahlberg, met a fate almost 

 precisely parallel. 



Little inferior to the elephant in strength, though by no 

 means approaching it in sagacity, the different species of 

 African rhinoceros manifest an irascibility against man 

 which waits not for provocation ; or rather the sight of a 

 man is itself a sufficient provocation to excite a paroxysm of 

 restless fury. Steedman -f- mentions a Hottentot who had 

 acquired a reputation as a bold elephant-hunter, who on 

 one occasion had had his horse killed under him by a 

 rhinoceros. Before he could raise his gun, the enormous 

 beast rushed upon him, thrust its sharp-pointed horn into 

 the horse's chest, and threw him bodily, rider and all, 

 over its back. The savage animal then, as if satisfied, 

 went off, without following up its victory, and before the 

 Hottentot could recover himself sufficiently for an aveng- 

 ing shot. 



Mr Oswell met with a similar rencontre. He was once 

 stalking two of these beasts, and, as they came slowly to 

 * Steedman's ^Yandm■n(Js, p. 74. f Ibid., i., p. C9. 



