Note 1 — Chapter II · SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO

Another seems to have been evolved recently, if I may draw that inference from a highly-coloured print I see in the shop-windows intituled: ‘An African rhinoceros hunt.’ A gentleman, on a fiery rearing steed, is engaging the enemy at very close quarters, and, unless he is a left-handed gunner, on the impossible side, as he is riding in the same direction as his quarry, and at its near shoulder. He may not be answerable for this position of affairs; it looks awkward, but he appears content, and holds his gun firmly by the middle, muzzle in air. The rhinoceros is the interesting figure in the picture, for he is mailed, like the Asiatic variety, and is either a late discovery, or an escaped specimen from the travelling show of some African Wombwell.

Rhinoceroses are puzzles to others besides artists. An old yeoman farmer, many years ago, lay dying near my house; to amuse him I sent some sketches and odds and ends, and received a message thanking me, but putting me straight as to those two-horned creatures being rhinoceroses; the rhinoceros had but one horn, he had seen it in a book, and it was no use my saying it had two, for it hadn’t. I suggested to him that we wanderers, who went far afield for hunting and shooting, had a hand in making the books, but he wouldn’t have it, and died a firm believer in one horn.