wti- acute frnell, not much different from that of the hound, February. . . , may not he perfectly true. In the evening, we rode home to our waggons; but the greater, part of our Hottentots did not come home till the next morning, after having iliot a young buffalo. On th e ,ift o f February, my horfe fell down with me, in hunting tire elk-antilope, as ..I have already mentioned at page 212 of this volume. The fame evening, two of our Hottentot markfmen found a rhinoceros lying on its right fide; and fo fait aileep withal, that it did not wake, though they chanced to make a confiderable clattering, by their gun-barrels itriking againft each other, when they firft happened to fee it through the buih.es, being then at the diftance of three or four paces only from its hinder parts, and immediately in their fright took aim ; but when they found that the animal did not wake, they gave themfelves time to refledt a little, and, after holding a confutation upon the matter, took a circuit round a couple of buihes, and having placed themfelves fo that they could point the muzzles of their guns right againft the animal’s head, difcharged their pieces both at the fame inftant into its brain: but afterwards again, the animal making a few trifling ftruggles, they were afraid it might come to itfelf again; for which reafon, as well as for their amufement, they charged again, and fired feveral balls into its cheft. This incident, together with the account given me by an old hunter, of a rhinoceros which he found fo fail aileep, that he had it in his power to go very near to it and ihoot it, induced me to believe, that this animal fleeps very found; though the cafe feems to have been quite otherwife with the one-horned rhinoceros which which Dr. P a r s o n s made his obfervations upon, and gave a deicription of in London. On the 2d, when I went to difledl the rhinoceros which had been iliot the day before, I found that my Hottentot markfmen, with a view the better to. preferve the flefh from putrefying, had taken out ¡the entrails as foon as the beaft was dead ; I faw, however, very evidently, from the liver, that thefe animals have na gall-bladder; a circum- ftance about which one of the farmers belonging to our hunting-party entered' into, a difpute with me, and for which reafon we were at that time very eager to chafe them. One of my Boihies-men, who had been ordered to come to us, and help to cut up the rhinoceros, and at the fame time bring with him a few things which we wanted, put us very .much to our ihifts.by flaying away. It feems that- he had rather chofen to repair to the elk which had been iliot the night before, partly becaufe he preferred the talle of elk’s flefh, and partly as, like the reft of his countrymen, he fet,great flore by the iitiews and aponeurofes of the elk; particularly thofe on the back of the animal, as forming the beit llrings that could begot for their clokes. Now this Hottentot, though according to our articles of war, as well as from his own experience, he might expedl to receive a good drubbing for an a£l of difobedience of this kind, yet he made his .appearance quite free and eafy,- with feveral flices of a honey-comb-in his hand, and making an excufe in his language, which was interpreted to me as follows : “ That the honi'ng-wyzer {cueulus indicator, vide page 186 of this volume) had enticed him quite away from that part of the country, where the rhinoceros was, V o l . II. Q q to
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