Most of the perennial rivers and even small streams of a few feet depth abound in crocodiles. Those of South Africa, whose nature and habits are described by Dr. Livingstone and Cumming, are a different species from the crocodile of the Nile, one of the sacred animals of the Egyptians. They are as great in size, however, and, perhaps, greater in voracity. Their great numbers, particularly in the waters of equatorial Africa, are astonishing. The natives hunt them, going in canoes, and using a sort of harpoon with which the stout armor, elsewhere impenetrable, of the animal is pierced behind the legs. The natives are fond of the flesh. Though a full-grown crocodile will weigh as much as an ox, there is not much flesh that is edible. Cumming shot one more than twenty feet in length in a stream not more than twelve feet wide. “On our return to Damagondai’s town,” says Du Chaillu, “as we were paddling along, I perceived in the distance ahead a beautiful deer, looking meditatively into the waters of the lagoon, of which from time to time it took a drink. I stood up to get a shot, and we approached with the utmost silence. But just as I raised my gun to fire, a crocodile leaped out of the water, and, like a flash, dove back again with the struggling animal in his powerful jaws. So quickly did the beast take his prey that though I fired at him I was too late. I would not have believed that this huge and unwieldy animal could move with such velocity; but the natives told me that the deer often falls prey to the crocodile. Sometimes he even catches the leopard, but then there is a harder battle than the poor little deer could make.” [Illustration: ATTACKED BY A HIPPOPOTAMUS.] The rhinoceros, formerly found on the slopes of Table Mountain, has now been driven far into the interior of South Africa, but here these huge animals, second only to the elephant and hippopotamus in bulk, are found along all the streams and in the neighborhood of fountains and pools of water. Dr. A. Smith in his “Zoology of South Africa” makes three species of rhinoceros. The great hunter, Cumming, describes what he considers as four different kinds.[4] Dr. Livingstone, however, asserts that there are but two species--the white and the black--insisting that all the species made by naturalists beyond these two are based on mere differences in size, age, and direction of horns, all which vary much in each variety. The rhinoceros has a “guardian spirit” in the rhinoceros-bird, his constant companion and devoted friend.[5] Those of the black species are very wary, fierce, and difficult to take. Their flesh is tough also, whilst that of the white rhinoceros is fat, tender, and, to the South African tribes, delicious. He is of a comparatively gentle spirit also, and more easily found and dispatched.