'But you are happy and contented here as a rule,' said the African.
'Yes, yes, I can't grumble; they are very good to me, and I get some exercise walking about, and as some day I shall grow old, it's as well, perhaps, to be looked after. It's terrible to be old when one lives in the forest; besides, I should feel strange to go back to the old life. I've been here now thirty years.'
'And I twenty. How time does go past!'
All this and much more you might hear if you knew the elephants' language, for they are quite too clever not to have some means of talking to each other.
The rhinoceros is very different. His eyes are wicked, he turns his head from side to side; he would like to stick that horn at the end of his nose into you if he could, and, holding you down with his great flat feet, rummage about inside you with it, and you would not live very long under that treatment. His skin hangs in great thick folds like plates of armour, and is so loose that it looks as if his tailor had fitted him very badly. He is much smaller than the elephant, and his thick-set body shows great strength. He is hideously ugly according to our ideas; but rhinoceros' ideas are different, and he would probably think the smooth pink-and-white skin of a child hideous. He lives in the jungle and eats the leaves of trees, which he tears off with his long upper lip. Some rhinoceroses have two horns on their nose and some only one. You can see both sorts in the Gardens. When the rhinoceros in its wild state has a little calf, as its young one is called, the little one runs along in front of the mother at the sound of any danger, and the mother follows in a wallowing trot behind, so that if necessary her body could guard it from danger. Sometimes hunters shoot rhinoceroses and kill them, and then eat part of them, which they say is very good, just like beef.
After leaving the elephant and rhinoceros house, we pass some sheds and yards, with deer and other animals, and then come to another set of buildings like stables, where there are the hippopotami and giraffes. If you thought the rhinoceros ugly, what will you think of the hippopotamus, with his great shovel-like nose and little ears? He looks like a stupid fat pig, only many, many times larger than the largest pig that ever lived. There are two of these animals in the Gardens now—a lady hippo, born at the Zoo, and about thirty years old, and another, quite a boy yet, only ten or eleven years old, who was born in the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. Neither of them have known what it is to wallow in the soft mud on the sides of rivers or the joy of living wild and free; they are fat, sleepy, stupid, and contented. There is a tank in their yard at the back, and they are free to walk out as much as they please. Sometimes they lie in the water with only their backs out for a whole afternoon at a time.
The yards of the giraffe are next door, but separated by a high wire fence, so that even the long neck of the giraffe cannot bend over and touch the hippos. Of all animals, the giraffe is, perhaps, the most odd, his neck is so very long, and his markings so rich. He looks as if he had a stiff neck, he holds his head so high, and seems so grand. Giraffes are very delicate animals, and great care must be taken of them. When you think how difficult it must be to bring an animal with a neck like that over the sea and in a railway train to England, it seems wonderful that the Zoo ever owns one at all. Giraffes live on the open plains in Africa, and if they take fright they fly away over the ground with their long legs, covering yards at each stride. If ever a hunter gets near enough to one to throw a rope round him, he may think himself lucky indeed. If a giraffe has been caught like this, the hunters draw him, kicking and struggling, up to a tree, tie him there, and leave him to fight and try to get free for a whole day and a night; sometimes he fights so desperately that he kills himself. However, if he is still alive in the morning, the hunters come and find him exhausted, and they can then take him away without so much danger of being killed by a blow from his great hoof or a swing of his hard head, which he uses to strike with. Once down at the sea, a special place has to be made in the ship so that his long neck may not be cramped; and when landed in England there is a long box-like arrangement fitted on to a compartment of a train, and this can be bent down flat along the roof of the train when it passes under a tunnel. Just think of the many difficulties there are before a giraffe can be transferred from his native plains to England! If you look at a tall giraffe, with his sad, lovely eyes, you will think it cruel that he should be brought into captivity; but, after all, when he is here he is well looked after, and everything is done to make him comfortable. And if he had not been brought here, thousands of people would never have seen one of the most curious animals in the world. The giraffes at the Zoo are continually changing, for though some have been born here, they do not live long, and new ones have to be brought from Africa at great cost.
Not far from the giraffe house are the zebras, with their beautiful black and white stripes, looking like wonderfully marked donkeys. They are very wild and untameable and of uncertain temper; it is best not to go too near them. Well, with the zebras we have finished seeing all the well-known animals of the larger kinds, and so we must say good-bye to the Zoo, perhaps to come again another day.