y, is the traveller indebted to the
rhinoceros. The beast is lazy, large, and has an excellent eye for easy
ways through. For this reason, as regards the question of good roads, he
combines the excellent qualities of Public Sentiment, the Steam Roller,
and the Expert Engineer. Through thorn thickets impenetrable to anything
less armoured than a Dreadnaught like himself he clears excellent
paths. Down and out of eroded ravines with perpendicular sides he makes
excellent wide trails, tramped hard, on easy grades, often with zigzags
to ease the slant. In some of the high country where the torrential
rains wash hundreds of such gullies across the line of march it
is hardly an exaggeration to say that travel would be practically
impossible without the rhino trails wherewith to cross. Sometimes the
perpendicular banks will extend for miles without offering any natural
break down to the stream-bed. Since this is so I respectfully submit to
Government the following proposal:

(a) That a limited number of these beasts shall be licensed as Trail
Rhinos; and that all the rest shall be killed from the settled and
regularly travelled districts.

(b) That these Trail Rhinos shall be suitably hobbled by short steel
chains.

(c) That each Trail Rhino shall carry painted conspicuously on his side
his serial number.

(d) That as a further precaution for public safety each Trail Rhino
shall carry firmly attached to his tail a suitable red warning flag.
Thus the well-known habit of the rhinoceros of elevating his tail
rigidly when about to charge, or when in the act of charging, will fly
the flag as a warning to travellers.

(e) That an official shall be appointed to be known as the Inspector of
Rhinos whose duty it shall be to examine the hobbles, numbers and flags
of all Trail Rhinos, and to keep the same in due working order and
repair.

And I do submit to all and sundry that the above resolutions have as
much sense to them as have most of the petitions submitted to Government
by settlers in a new country.

XXIII. THE HIPPO POOL

For a number of days we camped in a grove just above a dense jungle
and not fifty paces from the bank of a deep and wide river. We could
at various points push through light low undergrowth, or stoop beneath
clear limbs, or emerge on tiny open banks and promontories to look out
over the width of the stream. The river here was some three or four
hundred feet wide. It cascaded down through vari