CHAPTER XI. 



THE GREAT INDIAN RHINOCEROS. 



Rhinoceros Unicornis. 



Generally throughout India — Gaindd — Gaird. 



The Great Indian Rhinoceros appears in former times to have inhabited the Terai 

 throughout its whole length, but it has been gradually driven eastwards, until at the present 

 day the Nepal Terai is its western limit. Even there its numbers have been much thinned, 

 and it has lately been so highly prized that it has been reserved as Royal game, the late Sir 

 Jung Bahadoor permitting no one to shoot it but himself. 



Many Rhinoceros have been shot within the last few years in the vicinity of Julpaigori ; 

 but there, partly owing to being constantly hunted, and partly owing to the clearance of 

 large tracts for Tea cultivation, they are rapidly becoming scarcer, and the sportsman must 

 travel still farther east before he finds them at all plentiful. In the eastern portion of the 

 Bhutan Dooars and in Assam, wherever there are heavy reed jungles on the banks of rivers 

 or on the margin of swamps, Rhinoceros may be met with, and occasionally several congre- 

 gate in one covert. I have myself known six to be roused in a belt of ' mil' not more than 

 half a mile long and three or four hundred yards wide. 



The marvellous growth of the long grasses and reeds, which spring up during the rainy 

 season in the long belt of country lying along the foot of the Eastern Himalayas, and on the 

 ' chars' in the valley of the Brahmaputra and other great rivers, has often been described ; 

 and the accounts received with incredulity by those who have never seen how vegetation thrives 

 under the combined influences of a tropical sun and abundance of rain. Let those doubt who 

 may, however, the fact remains that, year after year, in the short space of two or three months, 

 these giant grasses shoot up to a height of from twenty to thirty feet, forming, with the wild 

 cardamum, various other broad-leaved plants, and numerous creepers, a tangled cover which 

 shelters the Elephant, the Rhinoceros and the Buffalo, as effectually as a field of standing 

 corn affords concealment to the partridge or the quail. 



I have seen a line of about fifteen Elephants beating a strip of reeds not more than two 

 hundred yards in width, and I could hardly see the grass shake. There was not as much 

 commotion or indication of what was going on, as would be caused by a pack of beagles 

 drawing a gorse covert. 



Runs or tunnels among the high reeds, like magnified ' meuses ' of hares and rab- 

 bits, show that the same paths through the thick jungle are generally made use of ; and the 



