His thick skin and fierce armament of horns seem to make of him a relic of some long-forgotten age--the last survivor of the time when mammoths and dinosauruses roamed the manless waste and time was counted in geological terms instead of days and minutes.

His eyes are dimmed and he sees nothing beyond a few yards away, but his hearing and sense of smell are keen, and he sniffs danger from afar in case danger happens to be to windward of him.

His sensitive nose is always alert for foreign and, therefore, suspicious odors, and when he smells the blood of an Englishman, or even an American, his tail goes up in anger, he sniffs and snorts and races around in a circle while he locates the direction where the danger lies--and then, look out.

A blind, furious rush which only a well-sped bullet can prevent causing the untimely end of whatever happens to be in the way.

That is the popular estimate of the rhino.
[Drawing: _Popular Conception of Rhino_] Here are some of the conclusions I have formed: If the hunter carefully approaches the rhino from the leeward he may often come within a few yards of the animal and might easily shoot him in a leisurely way.