NORTH-EASTERN RHODESIA 111 



senses alert and strained. Here there is a clear 

 impression of the great three-toed foot, there 

 a branch half-browsed. 



One of the four men is white and the other 

 three are black, but until you have looked closely 

 at the white man you would scarcely have 

 realized that the bronzed, long-legged, thorn-torn 

 being in the rent clothes was of European birth, 

 so sun-tanned, ragged and filthy does he look. 

 Swarms of awful biting insects — the tsetse fly 

 of the Dark Continent — fasten on legs and arms 

 and stab as though a red-hot hatpin had gone 

 deep into the flesh. But the joy of slaying, 

 which is bred in the bones of so many, braves 

 the vicious bite of the tsetse, the tears of the 

 cruel thorns, the glaring glamour and hellish heat 

 of the sun; and, presently, there is the reward — 

 the sight of the mighty animal standing amid 

 the bushes; the shot, perhaps a charge, and a 

 native gored; perhaps the white man with a few 

 smashed ribs or a broken arm. Though the 

 rhinoceros is the least formidable of the flve 

 really dangerous beasts of Africa, more than 

 one has lost his life in encounters with the 

 " borili " and the " keitloa," the two " varieties " 

 of the " zwaart rhenoster," as adjudged or 

 classified by the length of their horns. They 

 are great, short-sighted, blundering animals, of 

 keen scent and keen hearing, hideous as gargoyles, 

 irresistible as locomotives. 



The day will come when they, like all the 

 members of the primeval world, will disappear 

 before the mad onward rush of civilization, and 

 the titanic pachyderm will have to fight the 

 locomotive — as he has done literally before to-day 

 on the Uganda Railway — and the locomotive will 



