The flesh of the rhinoceros is eaten by all classes.  It is one of the five animals that a Brahmin is allowed to eat by the Shastras.  They were formerly much more common in these jungles, but of late years very few have been killed.  When they take up their abode in a piece of jungle they are not easily dislodged.  They are fierce, savage brutes, and do not scruple to attack an elephant when they are hard pressed by the hunter.  When they wish to leave a locality where they have been disturbed, they will make for some distant point, and march on with dogged and inflexible purpose.  Some have been known to travel eighty miles in the twenty-four hours, through thick jungle, over rivers, and through swamp and quicksand.  Their sense of hearing is very acute, and they are very easily roused to fury.  One peculiarity often noticed by sportsmen is, that they always go to the same spot when they want to obey the calls of nature.  Mounds of their dung are sometimes seen in the jungle, and the tracks shew that the rhinoceros pays a daily visit to this one particular spot.

In Nepaul, and along the terai or wooded slopes of the frontier, they are more numerous; but ‘Jung Bahadur,’ the late ruler of Nepaul, would allow no one to shoot them but himself.  I remember the wailing lament of a Nepaul officer with whom I was out shooting, when I happened to fire at and wound one of the protected beasts.  It was in Nepaul, among a cluster of low woody hills, with a brawling stream dashing through the precipitous channel worn out of the rocky, boulder-covered dell.  The rhinoceros was up the hill slightly above me, and we were beating up for a tiger that we had seen go ahead of the line.

In my eagerness to bag a ‘rhino’ I quite forgot the interdict, and fired an Express bullet into the shoulder of the animal, as he stood broadside on, staring stupidly at me.  He staggered, and made as if he would charge down the hill.  The old ‘Major Capt[=a]n,’ as they called our sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire.  The mahouts and beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption.  I fancy they expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be ’in for a pound as for a penny,’ I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over, with a bullet through the skull behind the ear.  The old officer was horror-stricken, and would allow no one to go near the animal.  He would not even let me get down to measure it, being terrified lest the affair should reach the ears of his formidable lord and ruler, that he hurried us off from the scene of my transgression as quickly as he could.