270 SHOOT A WHITE EHINOCEROS. [chap. ix. 



side of us. They are indeed immense creatures, so 

 far longer than the black ones, and their horns so 

 much larger. The rhinoceros now in the Eegent's 

 Park Gardens is a black rhinoceros ; it is much the 

 most vicious of the two kinds, but notliing like the size 

 of the other. We all tumbled off our oxen, some 

 twenty of us (the others had retiu-ned to Amiral's 

 waggons), and ran helter-skelter through the bushes, 

 each liis own way, till we were pretty near them, and 

 then, as one trotted up to see what was the matter, 

 a volley was blazed into him, that bowled him over 

 like a hare. The other one took a sweep and escaped 

 unshot. The rapidity with which the slaughtered one 

 was cut up was perfectly astonishing. I minuted the 

 whole occurrence ; it only took twenty minutes, and 

 we were in our saddles again thu-ty-five minutes after 

 we had left them. It must be recollected that three- 

 penny pocket-knives are not the best of instruments 

 to make an impression on rhinoceros hide. There 

 is no knife so good as a common butcher's knife ; as 

 a general rule, soft steel, or even iron, is far better 

 than hard steel, because you can sharpen the first on 

 any bit of stone, and the metal does not spHnter when 

 it comes against a bone. 



We followed an elephant path, which went as 

 straight as a Roman road. I took its direction several 

 times with an azimuth compass, and it did not vary 

 four degrees. We travelled till past nine, having been 

 on the move for six and a quarter hours. 



The next day, starting very early, poor Timmerman 

 and Frieschland both knocked up ; they had never 



