A musket shot will go through him if it meets not with the intervention of a bone; and the Shangalla kill him by the worst and most inartificial arrows that ever were used by any people practising that weapon, and cut him to pieces afterwards with the very worst of knives. I have said that, in the evening, he goes to welter in the mire. He enjoys the rubbing himself there so much, and groans and grunts so loud, that he is heard at a considerable distance. The pleasure that he receives from this enjoyment, and the darkness of the night, deprive him of his usual vigilance and attention. The hunters, guided by his noise, steal secretly upon him, and, while lying on the ground, wound him with their javelins mostly in the belly where the wound is mortal. A surgeon of the Shaftesbury Indiaman was the first who observed and mentioned a fact which has been rashly enough declared a fable[43]. He observed on a rhinoceros newly taken, after having weltered and coated itself in mud, as above mentioned, several infects, such as millepides, or scolopendra, concealed under the ply of the skin. With all submission to my friend’s censure, I do not think he is in this so right or candid as he usually is; not having been out of his own country, at least in any country where he could have seen a rhinoceros newly taken from weltering in the mud, he could not possibly be a judge of this fact as the officer of the Shaftesbury was, who saw the animal in that state. Every one, I believe, have seen horses and cows drinking in foul water seized by leeches, which have bled them excessively, and swelled under the animal’s tongue to a monstrous size. And I cannot say, with all submission to better judgment, that it is more contrary to the nature of things, that a leech should seize an animal, whose custom is to welter in water, than a fly bite and deposit his eggs in a camel in the sun-shine on land. But further I must bear this testimony, that, while at Ras el Feel, two of these animals were slain by the Ganjar hunters in the neighbourhood. I was not at the hunting, but, though ill of the flux, I went there on horseback before they had scraped off their muddy covering. Under the plies of one I saw two or three very large worms, not carnivorous ones, but the common large worm of the garden. I saw likewise several animals like earwigs, which I took for young scolopendræ, and two small, white, land-snail shells. I sought no further, but was told a number of different insects were found, and some of them that sucked the blood, which I take to be a kind of leech. There is then no sort of reason to accuse this gentleman of telling a falsehood, only because he was a better observer, and had better opportunities than others have had, and it is indeed neither just nor decent; on the contrary, it is a coarse manner of criticising, to tax a man with falsehood when he speaks as an eye-witness, and has said nothing physically impossible.