The Living Animals of the World, Volume I: Mammals

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to her was forty seconds, and the longest four minutes and twenty seconds the usual time being from two to two and a half minutes. She always remained a long time under water after having been fired at.

The capsizing of canoes by these animals is quite a common occurrence on most African rivers, and the great pains the natives will take in certain districts to give these animals a wide berth seem to prove that they have good reason to dread them. Solitary bulls and cows with young calves are the most feared. Such animals will sometimes, I have been assured by the natives, tear out the side of a canoe with their teeth, and even crunch up some of its occupants whilst they are trying to save themselves by swimming. Sipopo, a in 1876, was saidchief of the Barotse tribe, who was deposed by his nephew Mona Wena to have been attacked and killed by a hippopotamus whilst lying wounded amongst the reeds on the southern bank of the Zambesi, but I cannot vouch for the truth of the story.

Bull hippopotamuses must be rather quarrelsome, as I have shot several whose hides were deeply scored with wounds, no doubt inflicted by the tusks of their rivals. Once I killed a hippopotamus in a shallow lagoon amongst the swamps of the Chobi, whose enormously thick hide had been literally cut to pieces from head to tail. The entire body of this animal was covered with deep white scores, and we were unable to cut a single sjambok from its skin. We found, on examination, that this poor beast had been wounded by natives, and then in its distress most cruelly set upon by its fellows, and finally expelled from their society. It was in the last stage of emaciation, and a bullet through the brain must have been a welcome relief. On another occasion a hippopotamus bull, which I had wounded in the nose, became so furious that it dived down and attacked one of its fellows which DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS KO. I. had already been killed and was This and the next two photographs probably constitute the most remarkable series of animal photographs ever seen. No 1 shows a hippopotamus about to be lying dead at the bottom of the pool. trapped, preparatory to having its teeth attended to. Seizing this latter animal by the hind leg, it brought it to the surface of the water with such a furious rush that not only half the body of the dead animal it had attacked was exposed, but the whole of its own head and shoulders came above the water. it instantly, and it sank to the bottom of the pool, stillA bullet through the brain killed holding its companion's hind leg fast in its jaws. is killed in the water, the carcase sinks to the bottom, and in the When a hippopotamus cold water of the rivers of Mashonaland will not rise to the surface till six hours after death. In the warmer water of the Lower Zambesi a dead hippopotamus will come up in about half that time. When it rises, the carcase comes up like a submerged cork, with a rush as it were, and then settles down, only a small piece of the side showing above the surface. As decomposition sets in, it becomes more and more swollen, and shows higher and higher above the or current towater. When the body of a dead hippopotamus has been taken by the wind the wrong side of a river, I have often climbed on to it and paddled it with a stout stick is not the easiest or theright across the river to a spot nearer camp. A dead hippopotamus

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pleasantest thing to sit on in deep water with crocodiles about, especially in a wind, as it is very much like sitting on a floating barrel, and unless the balance is exactly maintained one is bound to roll off. Although it is often necessary for an African traveller to shoot one or more of them in order to obtain a supply of meat for his native followers, there is not much sport attached to the killing of these animals. The modern small-bore rifles, with their low trajectory and great penetration, render their destruction very easy when they are encountered in small lakes or narrow rivers, though in larger sheets of water, where they must be approached and shot from rickety canoes, it is by no means a simple matter to kill hippopotamuses, especially after they have grown shy and wary through persecution. As

II.these animals are almost invariably DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS NO. filing one of the lower tusks.killed by Europeans in the daytime, This shows the process of and are therefore encountered in the water, they are usually shot through the brain as they raise their heads above the surface to breathe. By the natives hippopotamuses are killed in various ways. They are sometimes attacked first with harpoons, to which long lines are attached, with a float at the end to mark the position of the wounded animal, and then followed up in canoes and finally speared to death. Sometimes they are caught in huge pitfalls, or killed by the fall of a spear-head fixed in a heavy block of wood, which is released from its position when a line, attached to the weight and then pegged across a hippopotamus's path a few inches above the

,/' } i1 '7 -'^' ground, is suddenly pulled by the feet of ''" If "^H. f7 "''''"'' r- '-^^^^^K it. A-^ i' ** one of these animals striking against friend of mine once had a horse killed under him by a similar trap set for buffaloes. His horse's feet struck the line attached to the

it heavily weighted spear-head, and down came, just missing his head and entering his horse's back close behind the saddle. Where the natives have guns mostly old muzzle-loading weapons of large bore they often shoot hippopotamuses at close quarters when they are feeding at night. The most destructive native method, however, of killing these is one monsters with which I am acquainted

DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS NO. in. which used to be practised by the natives sawing off one of the lower tusks. of Northern Mashonaland namely, fencing in

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a herd of these animals and starving them to death. As there is a very rapid fall in the country through which all the rivers run to the Zambesi from the northern slope of Mashonaland, these streams consist of a series of deep, still pools (called " sea-cow holes " by the old hunters), from a hundred yards to more than a mile in length, connected with one another by shallow, swift-flowing water, often running in several small streams over the bed of the river. A herd of hippopotamuses having been found resting for the day in one of the smaller pools, all the natives in the district, men, women, and children, would collect and build strong fences across the shallows at each end. At night large fires would be kept blazing

Photo by York & Son] [Hotting Hill. all round the pool and tom-toms FEMALE HIPPOPOTAMUSES. beaten incessantly, in order to prevent Exhibits A very characteristic attitude of the animal. the imprisoned animals from escaping. Day after day the fences would be strengthened, and platforms sometimes built to command naturally weak places, and from these points of vantage the poor animals were speared when in their desperation they tried to leave the pool. Gradually the whole herd would be speared or starved to death.

Once, in August, 1880, I came upon a native tribe engaged in starving to death a herd of hippopotamuses in a pool of the Umniati Kiver, in Northern Mashonaland. When I came on the scene, there still alivewere ten hippopotamuses in the pool. Eight of these appeared to be standing on a sandbank in the middle of the river, as more than half their bodies were above the water. They were all huddled up together, their heads resting on each other's bodies. Two others were swimming about, each with a heavily shafted assegai sticking in its back. Besides these ten still living hippo- Photo by York & Son] [dotting Hill. potamuses two dead ones were being A HIPPOPOTAMUS FAMILY FATHER, MOTHER, AND YOUNG. cut up on the side of the pool, and Hippopotamuses are very sociable animals, and are often to be met with in large many more must already have been herds.

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Photo by Q. W. WIUUH & Co., Ltd.] HIPPOPOTAMUS. The skin of the hippopotamus is often as much as an inch and a half in thickness on the upper parts of the body.

killed, as all round the pool festoons of meat were hanging on poles to dry, and a large number of natives had been living for some time on nothing but hippopotamus-meat. Altogether I imagine that a herd of at least twenty animals must have been destroyed. Much as one must regret such a wholesale slaughter, it must be remembered that this great killing was the work of hungry savages, who at any rate utilised every scrap of the meat thus obtained, and much of the skin as well, for food; and such an incident is far less reprehensible indeed, stands on quite a different plane as regards moral guilt to the wanton destruction of a large number of hippopotamuses in the Umzingwani Eiver, near Bulawayo, within a few months of the conquest of Matabililand by the Chartered Company's forces in 1893. These animals had been protected for many years by Lo Bengula and his father Umziligazi before him; but no sooner were the Matabili conquered and their country thrown all but a very few of theseopen to white men than certain unscrupulous persons destroyed

!half-tame animals, for the sake of the few paltry pieces of money their hides were worth

Gradually, as the world grows older, more civilised, and, to my thinking, less and less interesting, the range of the hippopotamus, like that of all other large animals, must become more and more circumscribed; but now that all Africa has been parcelled out amongst the white races of Western Europe, if the indiscriminate killing of hippopotamuses by either white men or natives can be controlled, and the constant and cruel custom of firing at the heads of these animals from the decks of river-steamers all over Africa be put a stop to, I believe that this most interesting mammal, owing to the nature of its habitat, and the vast extent of the rivers, swamps, and lakes in which it still exists in considerable numbers, will long outlive all other pachydermatous animals. Hideous, uncouth, and unnecessary as the hippopotamus