ch. v] DANGERS OF RHINO-HUNTING 117 
ground, a circular spot where the earth had been all 
trampled up and kicked about, according to the custom 
of rhinoceroses; they return day after day to such 
places to deposit their dung, which is then kicked about 
with the hind feet. As with all our other specimens, 
the skin was taken off and sent back to the National 
Museum. The stomach was filled with leaves and 
twigs, this kind of rhinoceros browsing on the tips of 
the branches by means of its hooked, prehensile 
upper lip. 
Now, I did not want to kill this rhinoceros, and I am 
not certain that it really intended to charge us. It may 
very well be that if we had stood firm it would, after 
much threatening and snorting, have turned and made 
off. Veteran hunters like Selous could, I doubt not, 
have afforded to wait and see what happened. But I 
let it get within forty yards, and it still showed every 
symptom of meaning mischief, and at a shorter range I 
could not have been sure of stopping it in time. Often 
under such circumstances the rhino does not mean to 
charge at all, and is acting in a spirit of truculent and 
dull curiosity; but often, when its motions and actions 
are indistinguishable from those of an animal which does 
not mean mischief, it turns out that a given rhino does 
mean mischief. A year before I arrived in East Africa 
a surveyor was charged by a rhinoceros entirely without 
provocation ; he was caught and killed. Chanler’s com¬ 
panion on his long expedition, the Austrian Von Hohnel, 
was very severely wounded by a rhino, and nearly died. 
The animal charged through the line of march of the 
safari, and then deliberately turned, hunted down Von 
Hohnel, and tossed him. Again and again there have 
been such experiences, and again and again hunters who 
did not wish to kill rhinos have been forced to do so in 
