At First The Traveller Is Pleased And Curious Over Rhinoceros.
After He Has Seen And Encountered Eight Or Ten, He Begins To Look
Upon Them As An Unmitigated Nuisance.
By the time he has done a
week in thick rhino-infested scrub he gets fairly to hating them.
They are bad enough in the open plains, where they can be seen and
avoided, but in the tall grass or the scrub they are a continuous
anxiety. No cover seems small enough to reveal them. Often they
will stand or lie absolutely immobile until you are within a very
short distance, and then will outrageously break out. They are,
in spite of their clumsy build, as quick and active as polo
ponies, and are the only beasts I know of capable of leaping into
full speed ahead from a recumbent position. In thorn scrub they
are the worst, for there, no matter how alert the traveller may
hold himself, he is likely to come around a bush smack on one.
And a dozen times a day the throat-stopping, abrupt crash and
smash to right or left brings him up all standing, his heart
racing, the blood pounding through his veins. It is jumpy work,
and is very hard on the temper. In the natural reaction from
being startled into fits one snaps back to profanity. The
cumulative effects of the epithets hurled after a departing and
inconsiderately hasty rhinoceros may have done something toward
ruining the temper of the species.
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