10 
African Game Trails 
tom of meaning mischief, and at a shorter 
range I could not have been sure of stop¬ 
ping it in time. Often under such circum¬ 
stances the rhino does not mean to charge 
at all, and is acting in a spirit of truculent 
and dull curiosity; but often, when its mo¬ 
tions and actions are indistinguishable from 
those of an animal which does not mean 
mischief, it turns out that a given rhino does 
will take too many chances when face to 
face with a creature whose actions are 
threatening and whose intentions it is 
absolutely impossible to divine. In fact, I 
do not see how the rhinoceros can be per¬ 
manently preserved, save in very out-of- 
the-way places or in regular game reserves. 
There is enough interest and excitement 
in the pursuit to attract every eager young 
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 order 
to prevent mischief. Under such circum¬ 
stances it is not to be expected that men 
hunter, and, indeed, very many eager old 
hunters; and the beast’s stupidity, curi¬ 
osity, and truculence make up a combina¬ 
tion of qualities which inevitably tend to 
insure its destruction. 
As we brought home the whole body of 
this rhinoceros, and as I had put into it 
eight bullets, five from the Winchester and 
three from the Holland, I was able to make 
a tolerably fair comparison between the two. 
With the full-jacketed bullets of the Win¬ 
chester I had mortally wounded the animal; 
it would have died in a short time, and it 
was groggy when it came out of the brush 
in its final charge; but they inflicted no 
