HOOK-LIPPED OR BLACK RHINOCEROS 649 
Doctor Kolb, who killed scores of rhinos, and was finally 
mortally hurt by a cow which, upon being wounded, charged 
him and thrust her horn through his stomach. An English 
official was also crippled for life by a rhino he had wounded. 
In dense bush a rhino is undoubtedly a dangerous antago¬ 
nist at times, as well as being difficult to approach. On the 
open plains we found them easy to approach and easy to 
kill, and only occasionally dangerous; they were slow to de¬ 
tect us, and then spent some moments deliberating before 
concluding either to make off or to charge. But though less 
dangerous than other dangerous game when hunted, the 
rhinoceros is more prone than any other beast to act aggres¬ 
sively when entirely unprovoked. The very stupidity and 
dulness of sense which tend to render his truculence of little 
danger to the hunter immensely add to the menace which 
that truculence contains for the non-hunter, the wayfarer, 
who stumbles across him. He fails to make out the man 
until close by, and then waits, stupid and curious, until he 
suddenly thinks himself menaced, or is excited to rage by 
seeing the stranger near at hand, and forthwith charges. 
There are some rhinos which charge from sheer wickedness; 
but we are convinced that stupidity and curiosity are chiefly 
responsible for the conduct of the average rhino, which makes 
people think that it is about to charge them. When it does 
charge, however, it shows astonishing speed and agility for 
such an apparently unwieldy animal, whipping round in its 
tracks like a polo pony, and galloping at a pace that forces 
a horse to stretch himself. If it loses sight of the man it 
will sometimes quarter for him like a pointer dog, swinging 
its large head near the earth and snuffing for his tracks. 
The ’Ndorobo told us that they found the rhino more dan- 
