inued)

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