240 ELEPHANT-HUNTING [ch. x 
animals did such damage to property, or became such 
menaces to human life. Among all four species, cows 
with calves often attack men without provocation, and 
old bulls are at any time likely to become infected by a 
spirit of wanton and ferocious mischief, and are apt to 
become man-killers. I know settlers who tried to pre¬ 
serve the rhinoceroses which they found living on their 
big farms, and who were obliged to abandon the 
attempt, and themselves to kill the rhinos because of 
repeated and wanton attacks on human beings by the 
latter. Where we were, by Neri, a year or two before 
our visit the rhinos had become so dangerous, killing 
one white man and several natives, that the District 
Commissioner who preceded Mr. Browne was forced 
to undertake a crusade against them, killing fifteen. 
Both in South Africa and on the Nile protection 
extended to hippopotami has in places been wholly 
withdrawn because of the damage done by the beasts 
to the crops of the natives, or because of their 
unprovoked assaults on canoes and boats. In one 
instance a last surviving hippo was protected for years, 
but finally grew bold because of immunity, killed a 
boy in sheer wantonness, and had to be himself slain. 
In Uganda the buffalo were for years protected, and 
grew so bold, killed so many natives, and ruined so 
many villages, that they are now classed as vermin, 
and their destruction in every way encouraged. In 
the very neighbourhood where I was hunting, at Kenia, 
but six weeks before my coming, a cow buffalo had 
wandered down into the plains and run amuck, had 
attacked two villages, had killed a man and a boy, and 
had then been mobbed to death by the spearmen. 
Elephants, when in numbers, and when not possessed 
of the fear of man, are more impossible neighbours than 
