The appearance of the Rhinoceros upon the globe was probably contemporaneous with that of the Proboscideæ. Fossil remains of the animal have been discovered in the temperate, and even the cold countries of Asia and Europe. In 1772 an entire rhinoceros, admirably preserved, was found embedded on the banks of a Siberian river, in the ancient frozen soil. Now-a-days he is exclusively confined to the tropical regions of the Old World. He lives a solitary life in the dense jungles of India, the Sunda Islands, Central and Austral Africa. Naturalists distinguish six varieties—the Rhinoceros of India, the one-horned Rhinoceros of Java, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Sumatra, the unarmed Rhinoceros, the two-horned Rhinoceros of Africa, and the Rhinoceros of Bruce.
The Indian Rhinoceros attains the height of five to six feet, and the length of seven to nine feet. He confines his wanderings in the main to the Trans-Gangetic peninsula. He has but one horn, and some dim tradition of this animal may probably have suggested the long popular fable of the mysterious Unicorn. His skin, of a dusky brown, is so singularly thick that it would have rendered all movement impossible on the part of the quadruped, if Nature had not disposed it in deep folds corresponding to the principal articulations. Thus he seems to the eye caparisoned in a body-armour of thick leather, formed in several pieces; and in truth his impervious hide constitutes a cuirass against which even musket-balls strike innocuously. Hence he dreads not the attacks of any of the Carnivora.
The Rhinoceros of Java is undoubtedly but a variety of the Indian species. That of Sumatra differs from the preceding in the possession of two horns—one, the anterior, of great length; the other, much shorter. His skin is moderately thick, very much wrinkled, in deep folds, and garnished with a quantity of long hair.
The unarmed Rhinoceros, who inhabits the islands of the Ganges, has but one rudimentary horn.
The African Rhinoceros is the king of his race. He wears a naked, smooth, and tenacious skin. Two horns are mounted on his upper jaw; the front one measures more than eighteen inches in length. In all Southern and Western Africa this huge ungainly quadruped is found.
The Rhinoceros of Bruce inhabits Abyssinia. His supreme idea of happiness, of the summum bonum, as viewed from a Proboscidean point of view, is to wallow luxuriously in the mud and slime, and while abandoning himself to this anti-Sybaritic indulgence, he heaves a hoarse groan of satisfaction, which conducts the hunter to his retreat. The Abyssinians pursue him on horseback. Some attack him with arrows or with musketry; others, and these are the boldest, leap from their steeds at the moment the rhinoceros leaps upon him, and hamstring him with their sabres. The huge quadruped falls immediately, and becomes an easy prey to his aggressors.[172] In South Africa the Kaffirs and the Hottentots display an equal audacity in attacking this formidable foe. They dare to confront him with their sharp knives alone, and generally with success, though a weak thrust or a wrong aim would entail upon them a sudden, swift, and terrible death.
Mr. Cooper Rose, in his “Sketch of South Africa,” celebrates an aged chief who had won a well-deserved renown by the most extraordinary instance of courage and presence of mind. He was out a-hunting. A rhinoceros broke abruptly from the covert of a dense thicket, and so near to him, that the Kaffir easily leaped upon his back. The furious animal immediately dashed through the jungle, beat the earth with his horn, roared with rage, and used his utmost exertions to dismount his unwelcome rider. In this he would have undoubtedly succeeded, and the negro must have perished, if happily the kross, or sheepskin mantle of the latter, had not been caught in the bushes. Mad with fury, the rhinoceros threw himself upon it, and while he was busy rending it in fragments the Kaffir leaped lightly to the ground, and saved himself in the deep recesses of the forest.
