When alarmed, the rhinoceros becomes easily flurried, appears to do things on impulse which other animals endowed with more sagacity would not do, and is by no means the vicious and vindictive brute which some writers have found him to be in South Africa and the Soudan. In the majority of cases, where a rhinoceros is said, by men who perhaps have not been very well acquainted with his peculiarities, to have charged in a most determined and vicious manner, I believe this so-called charge to have been nothing more than the first headlong and impetuous rush of the beast in a semi-dazed state, endeavouring to avoid an encounter rather than court one.
In spite of the fact that buffaloes are generally considered the most dangerous of all big game, rhinoceroses will test the nerve of a beginner more perhaps than any other big beast. In the first place, ‘rhinos’ are generally found standing or lying down quite out in the open plain, often under the shade of a small thorn tree, where there is very little covert of any kind, except, perhaps, a few scanty bushes and low ant-heaps (the majority of which would afford little or no protection in the event of a charge), and grass from 12 to 18 inches in height. Again, there is no knowing what ‘rhinos’ will do when shot at and wounded, and their behaviour is sometimes decidedly embarrassing, as they will often spin round and round, and these gyrations, accompanied by violent snorting, are rather alarming until one gets used to them. Rhinoceroses, when at rest, almost invariably stand and lie with their sterns to the wind--i.e. the beasts face more or less in the direction from which the stalker approaches them.
They also nearly always retreat up wind when alarmed, as, being gifted with very poor sight, they depend almost entirely on their extraordinary sense of smell for any warning of the presence of danger.
I have on several occasions passed to leeward within 100 yards of one, even in the open, and, though followed by several men, it was evidently quite unable to make us out, though it saw us, and showed no signs of fear by running away or of curiosity by advancing towards us for a closer inspection, the latter a common feature in the behaviour of some game. On one occasion, however, I walked close past to leeward of a rhino which haunted a certain plain in the Arusha-wa-Chini district, and which I knew well by sight, as he had a very short stumpy horn. I was after a herd of buffaloes at the time I passed him; on my return I saw him standing in almost the same position, and, wishing to see what he would do on getting my wind, I walked past to windward of him within 300 yards.