XVI 
RHINOCEROS 
95 
the hide with difficulty. Accidents frequently 
happen when the rhinoceros, thoroughly enraged, 
succeeds in snapping the rope. 
I have seen a horn in Khartoum that was 
brought down the White Nile by one of the slave¬ 
hunting companies, which came from the distant 
west, in the latitude of Lake Chad ; that must have 
belonged to a different species of rhinoceros, as it 
was quite 3 feet long, and immensely thick; no 
Ketloa or black rhinoceros ever possessed such a 
horn. The longest I have ever shot measured 
23 inches, and I have never seen a larger one in 
possession of the natives. 
There was a ready market in Gellabat, the 
frontier town of Abyssinia, as in that country the 
horn is in great demand for the handles of swords 
belonging to the chiefs. In 1861 in that locality the 
ordinary price was a dollar per lb. 
The skin of the rhinoceros is exceedingly 
compact and dense. When stretched over a block 
and dried, it is rubbed down with sand-paper, 
and oiled ; it then becomes semi-transparent, like 
clouded amber, and is much esteemed by the great 
personages of Abyssinia for shields ; these are 
beautifully mounted with silver, and are highly 
ornamental. I have a piece of skin tanned which 
measures 587 square inches and weighs 13! lbs. 
In its fresh state it would weigh more than double. 
Although the Soudanese Arabs eat the flesh of 
this animal, it is refused by the savage tribes of the 
White Nile regions. These people say that the 
