[1] 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.

[2] To my face the Kafirs always called me ‘Tlaga,’ which, I believe, means ‘on the look-out,’ wary, like game; behind my back, I have been told, I was called ‘Bones,’ from my leanness.

[3] I know in the representations on the medals of Faustina and of Septimius Severus the ears are African, though the bodies and heads are Indian; but these were struck nearly 400 years after Carthaginian times, when the whole known world had been ransacked by the Romans for beasts for their public shows; and I still think it possible that the Carthaginians—the great traders and colonisers of old—may have obtained elephants through some of their colonies, from India.

[4] Sir S. Baker tells me these prices are altered now, and that in 1892 elephant ivory fetches from 12s. to 18s. a pound, and hippo’s only from 5s. to 10s., as the dentists have given up using it.

[5] Mr. Wolf’s sketch does not quite bear out this statement; when he was drawing it I forgot to mention the peculiarity. I am, however, able to indicate it in the illustration, thanks to the courtesy of Mr. Caterson Smith, who altered the plate in accordance with my suggestion.

[6] I have said but little of our dogs, but they deserve mention. I never shot with them; but besides guarding the camp from surprise, they were invaluable, as in this instance, in helping us to pick up a wounded lion, or in telling us the whereabouts of a hard-hit ambushed buffalo—in this illustration the dog in the lion’s mouth was the Kafir’s, and the other two were the best I ever had (the likenesses are admirable). I have known them hold a lion at bay for nearly an hour, the larger one heading him continually, and the little rough Skye-looking fellow running in at intervals, nipping him in the rear, and then scuttling off at full speed.

[7] We heard of a third antelope which was said to burrow, but we never saw it. Has any later traveller anything to say about it? or is it a myth? The Kafirs were precise enough in their description.

[8] Here, again, my description must have been defective, and Mr. Wolf had not then been introduced to Jumbo, or the forelegs of the elephants would have been longer, the backs more sloping, the ears larger, and the facial angle less; but it is a beautiful piece of drawing and reproduces the surroundings and heated atmosphere most wonderfully.

[9] Since writing the above I find this subject has been discussed by the learned, and a decision arrived at unfavourable to the oryx; but I let my remarks stand, for I do not know that anything has been said on the glyphs in profile theory: the idea was first started in my mind by a conversation with the son of a late Bishop of Jerusalem.

[10] Zereba.

[11] This was one of many disappointments from the same cause, as at the time I was using a consignment of cartridges lately received from England, out of which 45 per cent. missed fire; and after I had had rather a disagreeable encounter with an old bull-buffalo, and had twice failed to stop a charging rhinoceros, my nerve was so shaken that I gave up using the 8-bore until I had sent to the coast for and received another lot (Messrs. Eley’s) which I had left behind, and which never once failed me, although they had been in the country, and in a moist atmosphere, over two years.

[12] Since this was written the roan antelope has been killed near the coast by Mr. Jenner. It is evidently very local.

[13] The small Celalolophus from Uganda has lately been described as a new species of C. equatorialis.

[14] It has now been verified from specimens obtained by Captain W. H. Williams, R.A.

[15] Tradition puts this bear at 1,900 lbs., but Mr. John Coles writes me that he saw the bear exhibited by a man named Adams in San Francisco; it was then said to weigh 1,500 lbs., and Mr. Coles adds, ‘I never heard any doubt expressed as to its weight.’—C. P.-W.

[16] Cf. W. Pike’s Barren Grounds of Northern Canada.