264 
African Game Trails 
grass. Its dung is very different; we only 
Occasionally saw it deposited in heaps, ac¬ 
cording to the custom of its more common 
cousin. The big, sluggish beast seems fond 
of nosing the ant-hills of red earth, both 
with its horn and with its square muzzle; it 
may be that it licks them for some saline 
substance. It is apparently of less solitary 
nature than the prehensile-lipped rhino, 
frequently going in parties of four or five or 
half a dozen individuals. 
We did not get an early start. Hour after 
hour we plodded on, under the burning sun, 
saw rather dimly through the long grass a 
big gray bulk, near the foot of the tree; it 
was a rhinoceros lying asleep on its side, 
looking like an enormous pig. It heard 
something and raised itself on its forelegs, 
in a sitting posture, the big ears thrown for¬ 
ward. I fired for the chest, and the heavy 
Holland bullet knocked it clean off its feet. 
Squealing loudly it rose again, but it was 
clearly done for, and it never got ten yards 
from where it had been lying. 
At the shot four other rhino rose. One 
bolted to the right, two others ran to 
through the tall, tangled grass, which was 
often higher than our heads. Continually 
we crossed the trails of elephant and more 
rarely of rhinoceros, but the hard, sunbaked 
earth and stiff, tinder-dry long grass made 
it a matter of extreme difficulty to tell if a 
trail was fresh, or to follow it. Finally, 
Kermit and his gun-bearer, Kassitura, dis¬ 
covered some unquestionably fresh foot¬ 
prints which those of us who were in front 
had passed over. Immediately we took 
the trail, Kongoni and Kassitura acting as 
trackers, while Kermit and I followed at 
their heels. Once or twice the two trackers 
were puzzled, but they were never entirely 
at fault; and after half an hour Kassitura 
suddenly pointed toward a thorn-tree about 
sixty yards off. Mounting a low ant-hill I 
the left. Firing through the grass Kermit 
wounded a bull and followed it for a long 
distance, but could not overtake it; ten 
days later* however, he found the carcass, 
and saved the skull and horns. Meanwhile 
I killed a calf, which was needed for the 
Museum; the rhino I had already shot was a 
full-grown cow, doubtless the calf’s mother. 
As the rhino rose I was struck by their like¬ 
ness to the picture of the white rhino in 
Cornwallis Harris’s folio of the big game of 
South Africa seventy years ago. They were 
totally different in look from the common 
rhino, seeming to stand higher and to be 
shorter in proportion to their height, while 
the hump and the huge, ungainly, square- 
* Kermit on this occasion was using the double-barrelled 
rifle which had been most kindly lent 'him for the trip by 
Mr. John Jay White, of New York. 
