Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1891-08-12
TRAPPING THE RAlNocERos.
An Exciting Scene in the Heart OF an
African Jungle.

An Exciting Scene in the Heart of an
African Jungle.
An African rhinoceros has no more
sense of fear than a rock The ele-
plant will run away when the odds are
against him, and the buffalo will calcu-
late his chances before an attack, I'M
less come upon too suddenly, but the
rhinoceros never stops to reason, and
whenever anything moves he makes a
rush to destroy it. That is why it is
comparatively easy to catch him in a
pit
An African traveller, telling of his
adventures, says:
I'VE were on the far side of the pit,
and, as soon as we saw the beast, we
sprang up and waved our arms to at
tract him. He accepted the defiance,
lowered his head, and as he came for
us he made the ground tremble. We
pretended TO run away, and the old fell
low was on the brink of the pit before
he suspected the job we had put up on
him. He uttered a loud 'Woofp and
next moment landed square on his head
in the bottom of the pit, breaking his
neck with a crack which could have
been heard forty rods awaY.1
OF another occasion, he writes:
Some ten or twelve of us were re-
turning from bee hunt one day, and
we took n path that had been made by
big game on their way to water, at the
end of which we had digged pit, COW
cred with light canes. At this time,
not a rhnocerOs had been seen in our
neighborhood for a month; but, as the
path was long one and walled in with
thorns, we took the precaution of send
ing the three men who had the honey
on ahead.
After they had been gone about ten
minutes we were ready TO move. We
sat just at the entrance of the path,
with open ground on three sides of us.
To the left of us was the extension of
the thicket l had been carrying a
smooth, white stone, which l had
picked up in the bed of a dry creek, and
] now gave it fling into the thicket.
The results were immediate and unex-
pected. The stone had hardly fallen
when there was a wool and great
crashing, and all of us knew that
rhinoceros was charging us.
''Our way lay up the path, and it SO
happened that | was the last one to
enter it, The beast was not yet in
sight as turned to flee, but before l
had gone one hundred feet he was out
of the thicket kept close to the heels
of the last native, but had not run
hundred yards when realized that the
rhinoceros was gaining on me.
1.-THE path was perhaps six feet wide,
with no possible chance to escape to the
right or left. The thorn bushes would
let nothing but rhinoceros or elephant
pass and the elephant will not crash
into them except when hard pressed.
I'VE were nearly half mile from the
pit, and it was our only hope of safety
as we ran. Fortunately for us nothing
had disturbed it, and, when l crossed it
the rhinoceros was not over ten feet be-
hind me. Indeed, as ! went off the
covering at one end, he crashed through
1t at the other.
'He went into the pit with loud
snort and then we saw what we had
not before suspected-a second beast
bearing down in the wake of the first.
He made no effort to check his speed,
ind went in on top of the other with an
awful crash. He got wedged in by the
head, leaving his hind legs kicking in
the air. and we killed both animals
with our spears Golden Days.