HUNTING THE RHINOCEROS 
No lion ever meddles with a full-grown kobaoba. The repu- 
tation for blind ferocity outlined above has been increased 
by almost every hunter from Harris and Andersson down. 
. Their narratives abound in stories of unexpected attacks and 
dreadful accidents; yet several of the most experi- 
enced of modern African sportsmen assert that the 
danger has been exaggerated, though the latter admits that 
some individuals are most vicious. “In my own experience,” 
he says, ‘“‘I always found that black rhinoceroses ran off at once 
on getting the wind of a human being; whilst, on the other 
hand, if they only heard one approaching, they would come 
toward the noise, and I have often known them to trot up to 
within twenty yards of where I was standing, snorting and puff- 
ing loudly; but as these animals always turned round and went 
off eventually without charging, I came to the conclusion that 
they were inquisitive and very short-sighted rather than vicious.” 
Sir Samuel Baker gives in his ‘‘ Nile Tributaries” ”° a thrilling 
account of how those wonderfully bold and skillful hunters, the 
Hamran Arabs of the Abyssinian interior, chase and kill this 
beast by a hamstringing cut with their heavy swords, followed 
by a coup de grace in the throat; and in another book **” he de- 
scribes how the negroes along the Nile White capture Behemoth 
in a leg trap which is precisely like that heretofore described 
as used for catching gazelles, and is so weighted that he cannot 
get away from the spearmen. 
In C. G. Schillings’s ‘‘ Flashlights in the Jungle’ will be 
found, many reproductions of photographs of rhinoceroses 
taken in German East Africa, several of which represent them 
as sitting on their haunches in what Schillings says is a favor- 
ite attitude of rest and observation. 
Ferocity. 
2c 385 
