HAUNTS OF THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS 
Assam plain, where many a beast finds the refuge denied him 
elsewhere in India. 
“The trees there are festooned with orchids and ferns roped together 
with a tangle of creepers, open glades covered with grass and undergrowth 
are to be seen here and there, and sluggish streams, half hidden under the 
leafy canopy, linger among the feathery canes and lofty peepul trees. 
Empty watercourses, like long white snakes, run through the green forest, 
forming the highways of man and beast, and in the shining sand who looks 
may read that elephant and rhinoceros, buffalo and bison, with deer in 
numerous species, daily wander there seeking their food. I need hardly 
say that when my duty called me to such a district I resolved to leave no 
stone unturned to secure a rhino. Government provided me with elephants, 
without which neither work nor sport, nor, indeed, locomotion of any kind, 
can be carried on in this wondrous corner of the earth. Imagine to yourself 
a vast plain covered with a Brobdingagian growth of grass fifteen to twenty 
feet high, in which an elephant makes no more stir than does a rabbit in a 
corn field at home. In this jungle there are moist hollows overgrown with 
reeds, and dark green islands breaking the monotony of the tawny surface 
of the withered grass, or a few fire-charred skeletons of lofty trees rearing 
themselves above it all. Suddenly one comes on a half-dried ‘wallow,’ 
where you, or rather your elephant, must walk warily, for it is in such places 
that you may find your rhino, either lying or feeding, should the young grass 
have begun to sprout; only you must be a very early bird to catch him, for 
when the sun arises he gets himself off to his forest, where he conceals him- 
self for the remainder of the day.”’ 
Its habits, according to Kinloch “° and others, are very sim- 
ple — merely feeding upon the leaves, shrub twigs, and grass 
around it, wallowing in mud, seeking now and then a mate or 
meeting a companion, and from time to time fighting a tiger or 
leopard. Sometimes a pair will travel far at night to feast upon 
a field of growing grain. Young ones are easily tamed, and 
this species has been kept in captivity in the East since prehis- 
toric days. Thence it was obtained by the managers of the 
Roman show houses for the gratification of their wonder-loving 
patrons; and after a dozen centuries a specimen was taken 
westward to amaze the people of western Europe, where it was 
first exhibited early in the sixteenth century. Nothing funnier 
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