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A young marquise, who had the reputation of being a great wit, said to me in the most serious tone, "It is truly an antique?" "The stone, madam, undoubtedly." Everyone laughed except the thoughtless young beauty, who did not take any notice of it. Towards the end of the dinner, someone spoke of the rhinoceros, which was then shewn for twenty-four sous at the St. Germain's Fair.
But I felt dizzy, and I could not and would not cross again. Angelo then sprang across the crevice, and remaining there, called for a plank of wood and a hatchet. "Bravo! bravo!" I exclaimed from the back of my rhinoceros. The plank was brought. It was an old, black-looking piece of wood, and I glanced at it suspiciously.
I have come in at night with my eyes fairly aching from spying for rhinos during a day's journey through high grass. And, as a friend remarked, rhinos are such a mussy death. One poor chap, killed while we were away on our first trip, could not be moved from the spot where he had been trampled. A few shovelfuls of earth over the remains was all the rhinoceros had left possible.
In one of these enclosures the rhinoceros was walking about, clothed in his plated and invulnerable hide; and in the next there were two elephants. The crowd of people were chiefly occupied in looking at the elephants. The palisade was very heavy and strong, being formed of timbers pointed at the top, and nearly as high as the elephants could reach.
The areas covered by them are practically impenetrable to men on foot, and there is a mysterious feel about this region, for it is the haunt of rhinoceros, tigers, and boars. In passing through it we have an uneasy feeling that almost anything may appear on the instant, and that once we were on foot and away from the path we would be irretrievably lost drowned in a sea of waving grass.
Of these the visitor should notice particularly the wild oxen of India and Java; compare the Indian rhinoceros with that of South Africa; and notice the hippopotamus family, from South Africa, as well as a diminutive specimen of the Indian elephant, and a half-grown elephant, from Africa.
"Large caravans from Ogadayn descend to the coast at the beginning and the end of the Fair-season. They bring slaves from the Arusa country, cattle in great quantities, gums of sorts, clarified butter, ivory, ostrich feathers, and rhinoceros horns to be made into handles for weapons.
Four or five antelope came in closer to see what was happening, and a zebra trotted by, neighing and startling the rhinoceros. After a rest for luncheon, they went on, looking for lions. Two wart-hogs jumped up, and Mr. Roosevelt shot the biggest of them. By this time it was getting late in the afternoon; time for lions to be about. At last they saw one; a big lioness.
In fact, the kobaoba rhinoceros is the quadruped next to the elephant in size; and with his great muzzle full eighteen inches broad his long clumsy head, his vast ponderous body, this animal impresses one with an idea of strength and massive grandeur as great, and some say greater than the elephant himself. He looks, indeed, like a caricature of the elephant.
This, Sir John Lubbock thought, might account for the co-existence of both hot and arctic species, like the hippopotamus and rhinoceros on the one hand, and the musk-ox and the reindeer on the other. But such considerations really help us little.
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