THE WHITE OR SQUARE-MOUTHED RHINOCEROS 
time when Cornwallis Harris had met with the white rhinoceros in almost 
incredible numbers, in what is now the Magaliesberg district of the 
Transvaal, thousands upon thousands of these huge creatures were killed 
by white hunters, and natives armed with the white man’s weapons, and 
the species had become practically extinct. A few still lingered, possibly 
a few may still linger, in the neighbourhood of the Angwa River in 
Northern Mashonaland, and a small number also survived in Zululand. 
These latter have been carefully preserved of late years, and in 1909 were 
supposed to number about twelve, including two or three calves. Shortly 
before that date, however, five of these most rare and interesting animals 
had met with their death by misadventure in the Zululand reserve. One 
was killed by a solitary old bull elephant — the only elephant still existing 
in Zululand. Another fell over a cliff and was killed; whilst a third died 
of some unknown disease, and two others, which had wandered out of the 
reserve into an inhabited part of the country, were killed by the natives. 
Up to a very recent date it was always supposed that the range of the 
white rhinoceros was entirely confined to the southern portion of the 
African continent, and that with the final extinction of the small number 
of these animals still surviving in Southern Rhodesia and Zululand, the 
species would vanish from the face of the earth. A few years ago, however. 
Major (now Colonel) A. St Hill Gibbons shot and preserved a square - 
mouthed grass-eating rhinoceros in the neighbourhood of Lado, on the 
west bank of the Upper Nile and about five degrees north of the equator. 
Since then it has been found that these animals exist in considerable 
numbers all along the western bank of the Nile, from Lake Albert to 
Shambe in the Bahr-el-Ghazal Province and probably further north still. 
Although the most southerly limit of the range of the northern white 
rhinoceros is separated by some 2,000 miles from the nearest point where 
the southern race of the same species has ever been known to exist, what- 
ever differences there may be between the two forms appear to be very 
slight and of little importance. However, in point of size, the white 
rhinoceroses found along the west bank of the Upper Nile certainly seem 
to be smaller than their relatives of South Africa. Mr Roosevelt found by 
actual measurement that the largest black rhinoceros he shot in the Sotik 
district of British East Africa actually stood higher at the shoulder than 
some of the adult white rhinoceroses he shot in the Lado Enclave. I imagine 
therefore that adult male white rhinoceroses on the Upper Nile do not as 
a rule stand higher than 5 ft. 8 in. at the shoulder. This is ten inches to 
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