170 BEASTS AND MEN 
over-anxious for a duel with the little monster, and indeed I 
found the situation far from pleasant. With quite remarkable 
agility I leaped over boxes and sacks to escape from the 
formidable onset, and in so doing I upset a sack weighing 
about 150 lb., which rolled into the rhinoceros’s stall ; and 
the animal, possibly mistaking the harmless sack for his 
enemy, hurled it into the air.as though it had been an india- 
rubber ball. Not wishing to give our African guest any 
opportunity of playing catch-ball with me, after the manner of 
his game with the sack, I hastily changed my quarters and 
completed the journey in safety. Later, when I was taking 
this young rhinoceros to London, I had further proof of his 
violent disposition. Being annoyed by the movements of his 
cage while it was being taken ashore, he charged the wall and 
split the thick planks as though they had. been no stronger 
than the wood of a cigar box. I then, however, covered the 
entire cage in a cloth, which put the animal in darkness and 
thus quieted him, and he eventually arrived safely at his 
destination. 
The hippopotamus is an even more bulky animal than its 
relative the rhinoceros; but nevertheless one of my travellers 
on one occasion actually transported a specimen in an ordin- 
ary travelling trunk. The story no doubt sounds slightly im- 
probable and may perhaps remind the reader of the American 
commercial traveller who journeyed with his trunk full—so he 
asserted—of telegraph poles! Yet on this occasion I am not 
trying to presume upon the credulity of the public. Curiously 
enough there occurred a considerable time ago an illustration 
in a German comic journal—which is here reproduced—re- 
presenting a traveller for my firm exhibiting samples of various 
animals, all packed in this very fashion. The artist might 
well be alluding to the incident of which I am here speaking, 
for I did really receive a hippopotamus packed up as ordinary 
luggage. The keeper whom I sent to Bordeaux to receive 
the animal transported it simply in a large travelling trunk, 
which he registered to Hamburg as luggage! The beast 
