I have said the rhinoceros does not eat hay or grass, but lives entirely upon trees; he does not spare the most thorny ones, but rather seems to be fond of them; and it is not a small branch that can escape his hunger, for he has the strongest jaws of any creature I know, and best adapted to grinding or bruising any thing that makes resistance. He has twenty-eight teeth in all, six of which are grinders, and I have seen short indigested pieces of wood full three inches diameter voided in his excrements, and the same of the elephant.
But besides these trees, capable of most resistance, there are in these vast forests within the rains, trees of a softer consistence, and of a very succulent quality, which seem to be destined for his principal food. For the purpose of gaining the highest branches of these, his upper lip is capable of being lengthened out so as to increase his power of laying hold with this in the same manner as the elephant does with his trunk. With this lip, and the assistance of his tongue, he pulls down the upper branches which have most leaves, and these he devours first; having stript the tree of its branches, he does not therefore abandon it, but placing his snout as low in the trunk as he finds his horn will enter, he rips up the body of the tree, and reduces it to thin pieces, like so many laths; and when he has thus prepared it, he embraces as much of it as he can in his monstrous jaws, and twists it round with as much ease as an ox would do a root of celery, or any such pot-herb or garden-stuff.
Such, too, is the practice of the elephant; we saw, at every step in these immense forests, trees in different progresses of this operation, some divested of their leaves and branches, and cut over as far down the trunk as was soft, and pliable, and was capable of being snapped off by one bite, without splitting or laceration; others, where the trunk was cut into laths or ribbands, some of which were ate in part, others prepared, but which had been left from satiety or apprehension of danger, a feast without labour for the next that should find it. In some places we saw the trees all consumed, but a stump that remained about a foot from the ground, and these were of the most succulent kind, and there we distinctly perceived the beginning of the first laceration from the bottom; and what, beside the testimony of the hunters, confirmed this fact beyond doubt was, that in several places large pieces of the teeth of elephants, and horns of the rhinoceros were brought to us, partly found lying on the ground at the foot of these trees, and part sticking in them.
Neither the elephant nor rhinoceros eat grass; if their food depended upon that, many times in the year they must be reduced to a state of starving, for the grass is naturally parched up in some seasons, and at others burnt purposely by the Shangalla. It is true, that in Europe their chief food is hay; trees cannot be every day spoiled for them in the quantity they would need. But this is not their natural food, more than the sugar and the aquavitæ that are given them here.
The roughness of the tongue of the rhinoceros is another matter in dispute: it is said to be so rough, that the animal with that can lick off the flesh of a man’s bones. Others say, the tongue is so soft that it resembles that of a calf. Both of these are in some measure true, but aggravated by the reporters. The tongue of the young Rhinoceros is soft, for the skin is much tougher and thicker too, than that of a calf, and has apparently some furrows or wrinkles in it, but it has no pustules nor rudiments of any that are discernible, nor indeed has any use for them. On the other hand, the tongue and inside of the upper lip of the old Rhinoceros are very rough, and this appears to me to arise from the constant use he makes of these parts in seizing the branches of trees which have rough barks, particularly the acacia. It is, when pursued, and in fear, that we see he possesses an astonishing degree of swiftness, considering his size, the apparent unwieldyness of his body, his great weight before, and the shortness of his legs. He is long, and has a kind of trot, which, after a few minutes, increases in a great proportion, and takes in a great distance; but this is to be understood with a degree of moderation. It is not true, that in a plain he beats the horse in swiftness. I have passed him with ease, and seen many worse mounted do the same, and though it is certainly true, that a horse can very seldom come up with him, this is owing to his cunning, but not his swiftness. He makes constantly from wood to wood, and forces himself into the thickest part of them. The trees that are frush, or dry, are broke down, like as with a cannon shot, and fall behind him and on his side in all directions. Others that are more pliable, greener, or fuller of sap, are bent back by his weight and velocity of his motion. And after he has passed, restoring themselves like a green branch to their natural position, they sweep the uncautious pursuer and his horse from the ground, and dash them in pieces against the surrounding trees.
The eyes of the Rhinoceros are very small, and he seldom turns his head, and therefore sees nothing but what is before him. To this he owes his death, and never escapes, if there is so much plain as to enable the horse to get before him. His pride and fury, then, makes him lay aside all thoughts of escaping but by victory over his enemy. He stands for a moment at bay, then, at a start, runs straight forward at the horse, like the wild boar, whom in his manner of action he very much resembles. The horse easily avoids him, by turning short to aside, and this is the fatal instant: The naked man, with the sword, drops from behind the principal horseman, and unseen by the Rhinoceros, who is seeking his enemy the horse, he gives him a stroke across the tendon of the heel, which renders him incapable of further flight or resistance.
In speaking of the great quantity of food necessary to support this enormous mass, we must likewise consider the vast quantity of water which he needs. No country but that of the Shangalla, which he possesses, deluged with six months rains, and full of large and deep basons, made in the living rock, and shaded by dark woods from evaporation; or watered by large and deep rivers, which never fall low or to a state of dryness, can supply the vast draughts of this monstrous creature; but it is not for drinking alone that he frequents wet and marshy places; large, fierce, and strong as he is, he must submit to prepare to defend himself against the weakest of all adversaries. The great consumption he constantly makes of food and water necessarily confines him to certain limited spaces; for it is not every place that can maintain him, he cannot emigrate, or seek his defence among the sands of Atbara.
The fly, that unremitting persecutor of every animal that lives in the black earth, does not spare the rhinoceros, nor is afraid of his fierceness. He attacks him in the same manner as he does the camel, and would as easily subdue him, but for a stratagem which he practises for his preservation. The time of the fly being the rainy season, the whole black earth, as I have already observed, turns into mire. In the night when the fly is at rest, he chooses a convenient place, and there rolling himself in the mud, he clothes himself with a kind of case, which defends him against his adversary the following day. The wrinkles and plaits of his skin serve to keep this muddy plaster firm upon him, all but about his hips, shoulders, and legs, where it cracks and falls off by motion, and leaves him exposed in those places to the attacks of the fly. The itching and pain which follow occasion him to rub himself in those parts against the roughest trees, and this is at least one cause of the pustules or tubercules which we see upon these places, both on the elephant and rhinoceros. The Count de Buffon, who believes these pustules to be natural parts of the creature, says, in proof of this, that they have been found in the fœtus of a rhinoceros. I do not pretend to disbelieve this; it may be, that these punctures happening to the old female at the time she was with young, the impression of her sufferings might have appeared upon the young one. However this is, I cannot conceal that I have heard, not from hunters only, but men worthy of credit, that this is the origin of these protuberances; and many rhinoceroses, slain in Abyssinia, are known to have been found at the season of the fly, with their shoulders and buttocks bloody and excoriated. It is likewise by no means true, that the skin of the rhinoceros is hard or impenetrable like a board. I should rather suspect this to be disease, or from a different habit acquired by keeping; for in his wild state he is slain by javelins thrown from indifferent hands, which I have seen buried three feet in his body. A musket shot will go through him if it meets not with the intervention of a bone; and the Shangalla kill him by the worst and most inartificial arrows that ever were used by any people practising that weapon, and cut him to pieces afterwards with the very worst of knives.
I have said that, in the evening, he goes to welter in the mire. He enjoys the rubbing himself there so much, and groans and grunts so loud, that he is heard at a considerable distance. The pleasure that he receives from this enjoyment, and the darkness of the night, deprive him of his usual vigilance and attention. The hunters, guided by his noise, steal secretly upon him, and, while lying on the ground, wound him with their javelins mostly in the belly where the wound is mortal.
A surgeon of the Shaftesbury Indiaman was the first who observed and mentioned a fact which has been rashly enough declared a fable[43]. He observed on a rhinoceros newly taken, after having weltered and coated itself in mud, as above mentioned, several infects, such as millepides, or scolopendra, concealed under the ply of the skin. With all submission to my friend’s censure, I do not think he is in this so right or candid as he usually is; not having been out of his own country, at least in any country where he could have seen a rhinoceros newly taken from weltering in the mud, he could not possibly be a judge of this fact as the officer of the Shaftesbury was, who saw the animal in that state. Every one, I believe, have seen horses and cows drinking in foul water seized by leeches, which have bled them excessively, and swelled under the animal’s tongue to a monstrous size. And I cannot say, with all submission to better judgment, that it is more contrary to the nature of things, that a leech should seize an animal, whose custom is to welter in water, than a fly bite and deposit his eggs in a camel in the sun-shine on land. But further I must bear this testimony, that, while at Ras el Feel, two of these animals were slain by the Ganjar hunters in the neighbourhood. I was not at the hunting, but, though ill of the flux, I went there on horseback before they had scraped off their muddy covering. Under the plies of one I saw two or three very large worms, not carnivorous ones, but the common large worm of the garden. I saw likewise several animals like earwigs, which I took for young scolopendræ, and two small, white, land-snail shells. I sought no further, but was told a number of different insects were found, and some of them that sucked the blood, which I take to be a kind of leech. There is then no sort of reason to accuse this gentleman of telling a falsehood, only because he was a better observer, and had better opportunities than others have had, and it is indeed neither just nor decent; on the contrary, it is a coarse manner of criticising, to tax a man with falsehood when he speaks as an eye-witness, and has said nothing physically impossible.