90 RHINOCEROS. 
\ 
the morning approached : several of the agageers (or 
hunters) then joined us; and after we had searched 
about an hour in the very thickest part of the wood, 
one of them rushed out with great violence, cross- 
ing the plain towards a wood of canes that was 
about two miles distant. But though he ran, or 
rather trotted, with surprising speed, considering his 
bulk, he was in a very little time transfixed with 
thirty or forty javelins; which so confounded him, 
that he left his purpose of going to the wood, and 
ran into a deep hole, ditch, or ravine, a cul de sac , 
without outlet, breaking above a dozen of javelins 
as he entered. Here we thought he was caught as 
in a trap ; for he had scarce room to turn ; when a 
servant, who had a gun, standing directly over him, 
fired at his head, and the animal fell immediately, 
to all appearance dead. All those on foot now 
jumped in with their knives to cut him up ; and 
they had scarce begun, when the animal recovered 
so far as to rise upon his knees : happy then was 
the man who escaped first ; and had not one of the 
agageers, who was himself engaged in the ravine, 
cut the sinew of the hind leg as he was retreating, 
there would have been a very sorrowful account of 
the foot hunters that day. 
“ After having dispatched him,. I was curious to 
see what wound the shot had given, which had 
operated so violently upon so huge an animal ; and 
I doubted not it was the brain. But it had only 
struck him on the point of the foremost horn, of 
which it had carried off above an inch ; and this 
