At first the traveller is pleased and curious over rhinoceros. After he
has seen and encountered eight or ten, he begins to look upon them as
an unmitigated nuisance. By the time he has done a week in thick
rhino-infested scrub he gets fairly to hating them.
They are bad enough in the open plains, where they can be seen and
avoided, but in the tall grass or the scrub they are a continuous
anxiety. No cover seems small enough to reveal them. Often they will
stand or lie absolutely immobile until you are within a very short
distance, and then will outrageously break out. They are, in spite of
their clumsy build, as quick and active as polo ponies, and are the
only beasts I know of capable of leaping into full speed ahead from a
recumbent position. In thorn scrub they are the worst, for there, no
matter how alert the traveller may hold himself, he is likely to come
around a bush smack on one. And a dozen times a day the throat-stopping,
abrupt crash and smash to right or left brings him up all standing, his
heart racing, the blood pounding through his veins. It is jumpy work,
and is very hard on the temper. In the natural reaction from being
startled into fits one snaps back to profanity. The cumulative effects
of the epithets hurled after a departing and inconsiderately hasty
rhinoceros may have done something toward ruining the temper of the
species. It does not matter whether or not the individual beast proves
dangerous; he is inevitably most startling. I have come in at night
with my eyes fairly aching from spying for rhinos during a day's journey
through high grass.
And, as a friend remarked, rhinos are such a mussy death. One poor chap,
killed while we were away on our first trip, could not be moved from
the spot where he had been trampled. A few shovelfuls of earth over the
remains was all the rhinoceros had left possible.
Fortunately, in the thick stuff especially, it is often possible to
avoid the chance rhinoceros through the warning given by the rhinoceros
birds. These are birds about the size of a robin that accompany the
beast everywhere. They sit in a row along his back occupying themselves
with ticks and a good place to roost. Always they are peaceful and quiet
until a human being approaches. Then they flutter a few feet into the
air uttering a peculiar rapid chattering. Writers with more sentiment
than sense of proportion assure us that this warns the rhinoceros of
approaching danger! On the contrary, I always looked at it the other
way. The rhinoceros birds thereby warned ME of danger, and I was duly
thankful.
The safari boys stand quite justly in a holy awe of the rhino. The
safari is strung out over a mile or two of country, as a usual thing,
and a downwind rhino is sure to pierce some part of the line in his
rush. Then down go the loads with a smash, and up the nearest trees
swarm the boys. Usually their refuges are thorn trees, armed, even on
the main trunk, with long sharp spikes. There is no difficulty in going
up, but the gingerly coming down, after all the excitement has died, is
a matter of deliberation and of voices uplifted in woe. Cuninghame tells
of an inadequate slender and springy, but solitary, sapling into which
swarmed half his safari on the advent of a rambunctious rhino. The tree
swayed and bent and cracked alarmingly, threatening to dump the whole
lot on the ground. At each crack the boys yelled. This attracted the
rhinoceros, which immediately charged the tree full tilt. He hit square,
the tree shivered and creaked, the boys wound their arms and legs around
the slender support and howled frantically. Again and again rhinoceros
drew back to repeat his butting of that tree. By the time Cuninghame
reached the spot, the tree, with its despairing burden of black birds,
was clinging to the soil by its last remaining roots.
In the Nairobi Club I met a gentleman with one arm gone at the shoulder.
He told his story in a slightly bored and drawling voice, picking
his words very carefully, and evidently most occupied with neither
understating nor overstating the case. It seems he had been out, and had
killed some sort of a buck. While his men were occupied with this, he
strolled on alone to see what he could find. He found a rhinoceros, that
charged viciously, and into which he emptied his gun.
“When I came to,” he said, “it was just coming on dusk, and the lions
were beginning to grunt. My arm was completely crushed, and I was badly
bruised and knocked about. As near as I could remember I was fully ten
miles from camp. A circle of carrion birds stood all about me not more
than ten feet away, and a great many others were flapping over me and
fighting in the air. These last were so close that I could feel the wind
from their wings. It was rawther gruesome.” He paused and thought a a
moment, as though weighing his words. “In fact,” he added with an air of
final conviction, “it was QUITE gruesome!”
The most calm and imperturbable rhinoceros I ever saw was one that made
us a call on the Thika River. It was just noon, and our boys were making
camp after a morning's march. The usual racket was on, and the usual
varied movement of rather confused industry. Suddenly silence fell.
We came out of the tent to see the safari gazing spellbound in one
direction. There was a rhinoceros wandering peaceably over the little
knoll back of camp, and headed exactly in our direction. While we
watched, he strolled through the edge of camp, descended the steep bank
to the river's edge, drank, climbed the bank, strolled through camp
again and departed over the hill. To us he paid not the slightest
attention. It seems impossible to believe that he neither scented nor
saw any evidences of human life in all that populated flat, especially
when one considers how often these beasts will SEEM to become aware of
man's presence by telepathy.* Perhaps he was the one exception to the
whole race, and was a good-natured rhino.
* Opposing theories are those of “instinct,” and of slight
causes, such a grasshoppers leaping before the hunter's
feet, not noticed by the man approaching.
The babies are astonishing and amusing creatures, with blunt noses on
which the horns are just beginning to form, and with even fewer manners
than their parents. The mere fact of an 800-pound baby does not cease
to be curious. They are truculent little creatures, and sometimes rather
hard to avoid when they get on the warpath. Generally, as far as my
observation goes, the mother gives birth to but one at a time. There may
be occasional twin births, but I happen never to have met so interesting
a family.
Rhinoceroses are still very numerous-too numerous. I have seen as many
as fourteen in two hours, and probably could have found as many more
if I had been searching for them. There is no doubt, however, that this
species must be the first to disappear of the larger African animals.
His great size combined with his 'orrid 'abits mark him for early
destruction. No such dangerous lunatic can be allowed at large in a
settled country, nor in a country where men are travelling constantly.
The species will probably be preserved in appropriate restricted
areas. It would be a great pity to have so perfect an example of the
Prehistoric Pinhead wiped out completely. Elsewhere he will diminish,
and finally disappear.
For one thing, and for one thing only, is the traveller indebted to the
rhinoceros. The beast is lazy, large, and has an excellent eye for easy
ways through. For this reason, as regards the question of good roads, he
combines the excellent qualities of Public Sentiment, the Steam Roller,
and the Expert Engineer. Through thorn thickets impenetrable to anything
less armoured than a Dreadnaught like himself he clears excellent
paths. Down and out of eroded ravines with perpendicular sides he makes
excellent wide trails, tramped hard, on easy grades, often with zigzags
to ease the slant. In some of the high country where the torrential
rains wash hundreds of such gullies across the line of march it
is hardly an exaggeration to say that travel would be practically
impossible without the rhino trails wherewith to cross. Sometimes the
perpendicular banks will extend for miles without offering any natural
break down to the stream-bed. Since this is so I respectfully submit to
Government the following proposal:
(a) That a limited number of these beasts shall be licensed as Trail
Rhinos; and that all the rest shall be killed from the settled and
regularly travelled districts.
(b) That these Trail Rhinos shall be suitably hobbled by short steel
chains.
(c) That each Trail Rhino shall carry painted conspicuously on his side
his serial number.
(d) That as a further precaution for public safety each Trail Rhino
shall carry firmly attached to his tail a suitable red warning flag.
Thus the well-known habit of the rhinoceros of elevating his tail
rigidly when about to charge, or when in the act of charging, will fly
the flag as a warning to travellers.
(e) That an official shall be appointed to be known as the Inspector of
Rhinos whose duty it shall be to examine the hobbles, numbers and flags
of all Trail Rhinos, and to keep the same in due working order and
repair.
And I do submit to all and sundry that the above resolutions have as
much sense to them as have most of the petitions submitted to Government
by settlers in a new country.