It was scarcely to be imagined that in the course of this same day I was to get within range of eight more rhinoceroses. It is hard to realise what numbers of them there are in these mountainous regions. It is a puzzle to me that this fact has not been proclaimed abroad in sporting books and become known to everybody. But then, what did we know, until a few years ago, of the existence of the okapi in Central Africa? How much do we know even now of its numbers? For that matter, who can tell us anything definite as to the quantities of walruses in the north, or the numbers of yaks in the Thibetan uplands, or of elks and of bears in the impenetrable Alaskan woods?
It seems to be the fate of the larger animals to be exterminated by traders who do not give away their knowledge of the resources of the hunting regions which they exploit. English and American authors, among them so high an authority as President Roosevelt, bear me out in this. I remember reading as a boy of a traveller, a fur-trader, who happened to hear of certain remote northern islands well stocked with the wild life he wanted. He kept the information to himself, and made a fortune out of the game he bagged; but when he quitted the islands their entire fauna had been wiped out. The same thing is now happening in Africa. Our only clue to the extent of the slaughtering of elephants now being carried on is furnished by the immense quantities of ivory that come on the market. So it is, too, with the slaughtering of whales and seals for the purposes of commerce. It is with them as with so many men—we shall begin to hear of them when they are dead.
But to come back to our rhinoceroses. Not long before sunset I saw another animal grazing peacefully on a ridge just below me, apparently finding the short grass growing there entirely to his taste. The monstrous outlines of the great beast munching away in among the jagged rocks stood out most strikingly in the red glow of the setting sun. It would have been no good to me to shoot him, for all my thoughts were set on finding a satisfactory camping-place for the night. Soon afterwards I came suddenly upon two others right in my path—a cow with a young one very nearly full grown. In a moment my men, who were a little behind, had skedaddled behind a ridge of rocks. I myself just managed to spring aside in time to escape the cow, putting a great boulder between us. Round she came after me, and I realised as never before the degree to which a man is handicapped by his boots in attempting thus to dodge an animal. It was a narrow escape, but in this case also a well-aimed bullet did the trick. We left the body where it lay, intending to come back next morning for the horns. Some minutes later, after scurrying downhill for a few hundred paces as quickly as we could, so as to avoid being overtaken by the night, we met three other rhinoceroses which evidently had not heard my shot ring out. They were standing on a grassy knoll in the midst of the valley which we had now reached, and did not make off until they saw us. By the stream, near which we pitched our camp for the night, we came upon two more among some bushes, and yet another rushing through a thicket which we had to traverse on our way to the waterside. In the night several others passed down the deep-trodden path to the stream, fortunately heralding their approach by loud, angry-sounding snorts.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
A SNAPSHOT AT TWENTY PACES WITH A HAND-CAMERA, WHICH I HAD TO THROW AWAY THE NEXT SECOND, FOR THE “RHINO” MADE FOR ME AND ONLY TURNED ASIDE WHEN IT HAD GOT WITHIN THREE PACES OF ME!
Many such nights have I spent out in the wild; but I would not now go through with such experiences very willingly, for I have heard tell of too many mishaps to other travellers under such conditions. That seasoned Rhenish sportsman Niedieck, for instance, in his interesting book Mit der Büchse in fünf Weltteilen, gives a striking account of a misadventure he met with in the Sudan, near the banks of the Nile. In very similar circumstances his camp was attacked by elephants during the night; he himself was badly injured, and one of his men nearly killed. This danger in regions where rhinoceroses or elephants are much hunted is by no means to be underestimated. Rather it should be taken to heart. According to the same writer, the elephants in Ceylon sometimes “go for” the travellers’ rest-houses erected by the Government and destroy them. These things have brought it home to me that I was in much greater peril of my life during those night encampments of mine on the velt and in primeval forests than I realised at the time.
In those parts of East Africa there is a tendency to imagine that a zareba is not essential to safety, and that a camp-fire serves all right to frighten lions away. It is a remarkable comment on this that over a hundred Indians employed on the Uganda Railway should have been seized by lions. In other parts of Africa even the natives are reluctant to go through the night unprotected by a zareba, because they know that lions when short of other prey are apt to attack human beings, and neither the hunter nor his camp-fire have any terrors for them.
However that may be, the true sportsman and naturalist in the tropics will continue to find himself obliged to encamp as best he may à la belle étoile, trusting to his lucky star to protect him as he sinks wearily to sleep.