When Chota Begum at length pulled up, she had to listen to
some terrible home-truths about her ancestry from the mahout, who was
bitterly disappointed in his beloved charge. As to questions of
lineage, and the morals of Chota Begum's immediate progenitors, I can
only hope that the mahout exaggerated, for he certainly opened up
appalling perspectives. Any old lady would have got scared at seeing
so hideous a monster preparing to rip her open, and under the
circumstances you and I would have run away just as fast as Chota
Begum did.
The only other wild rhinoceros I ever saw was on the very last day of
our stay in Assam. We were returning home on elephants, when they
began to trumpet loudly, as we approached a little dip. My nephew,
General Sir Henry Streatfeild, called out to me to be ready, as there
was probably a bear in the hollow. Next moment a rhinoceros charged
out and made straight for his elephant. Sir Henry fired with a heavy
four-bore rifle, and by an extraordinary piece of good luck hit the
rhino in the one little spot where he is vulnerable, otherwise he must
have been killed. The huge beast rolled over like a shot hare,
stone-dead.
One evening on our way back to camp, we thought that we would ride our
elephants ourselves, and told the mahouts to get down.
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