2j6 
A COLONY IN THE MAKING 
CHAP. 
a grass diet, is reported to have remarked, " on tasting 
the unwonted food : ‘ it may be eaten, but it isn’t 
good.’ ” The only real use of the rhino is to provide 
thrills for big-game hunters and episodes with which 
to harrow the feelings and compel the admiration 
of friends in England. It is the very rarest of 
exceptions for a “ safari ” to return from a shooting 
expedition without a rhinoceros having provided a 
hairbreadth escape to some member of the party, 
black or white. It may be of some consolation to the 
intending voyager to know that the breadth of the hair 
will practically always be on the right side. During all 
the years of big-game shooting in British East Africa, 
and after all the many hundreds of specimens which 
have been slain—707 were accounted for in 1910 and 
1911 alone—the fatal or even serious accidents can be 
counted on the fingers of one hand. The rhinoceros 
is large, the rhinoceros is blind, he looks very fierce, 
and he has got to go somewhere when disturbed, which, 
like most animals, is almost invariably up wind. The 
consequence of these facts is that a horrid great 
monster, sleeping under a tree, gets the wind of a 
caravan and naturally rushes up wind towards and 
through it, and no one can deny that he looks most 
objectionable. As a proof, however, that he is not 
really vicious lies the fact that it is the rarest of 
occasions on which he retraces his steps ; almost 
invariably his initial rush goes straight on. Mr. 
Stigand, in a very carefully reasoned argument, comes 
to the conclusion that one in every 250 rhino charges 
with vicious intent. In common with everyone who 
has passed much time travelling about the Protectorate, 
I have seen a good many hundred rhinosceros, but only 
once have I seen a rhino—or in this case a pair of them— 
