This steed was not very fast, but he had great endurance and traveled very easily and pleasantly, without seeming to mind in the least the black fellows who leaped and shouted in front of him in a way that would have frightened the soberest old horse that ever hauled a sand cart.
Perhaps the bull knew that these men were merely trying to impress upon the mind of the Colonel that they were wonderfully brave, and that with their spears and their yells they could scare away any enemy that might be encountered, while in fact a white man with a couple of pistols could have frightened them out of their wits in about half a minute.
THE COLONEL ON THE BULL.
But whether the bull knew this or not, he paid no attention to the dancing braves, and carried the Colonel faithfully for many a long mile.
But Colonel Myles did not always travel on bulls or in hammocks. After a time he found an admirable horse, on which he rode on many a hunting expedition.
Among the first large animals he hunted—he did not count deer and such small game—were rhinoceroses, of which there were a great many in that part of the country.
One of his first hunts of the kind began in rather a curious manner.
He had heard that there were rhinoceroses to be found in a certain hilly part of the country, and, accompanied by two negroes, he started on his horse quite early in the morning.
Reaching some very rough ground, he thought it better to climb over the rocks on foot, so he tied his horse to the branch of a tree and set off with his companions to reconnoitre. They walked up and down through the bushes, and over gullies, searching for the big animals they were after, but not a horn of one of them could they see.