XXI POOR SPORT 461 



but I used the ordinary small hollow bullet. No 

 praise can be too high for Mr. Gibbs's admirable 

 little Metford Express rifle ; with the same little 

 weapon about which 1 am now speaking, 1 had 

 killed in the preceding June two black rhinoceroses, 

 each with a single hollow bullet, and three large full- 

 p'rown lions with four bullets. 



Sea-cow shooting is a sport that 1 care very little 

 about. In the first place, it is usually so difficult 

 to know the result of one's shot, and if you do 

 kill your animal, you have to wait several hours 

 before you can secure it. In a large river like the 

 Zambesi, where you have to shoot out of a canoe, 

 and the sea-cows can take clean away up or down 

 the river, or, as they sometimes do, attack the boat, 

 this sport needs excessive skill and quickness in 

 shooting, and is sometimes attended with a certain 

 amount of danger. In a small river like the Umfule, 

 however, where the poor animals are in a com- 

 paratively narrow pool, from which there is no 

 escape for them until night hides their movements, 

 and where the requirements of nature force them 

 constantly to expose themselves as they raise their 

 heads to breathe, one feels that they are too heavily 

 handicapped, and after the excitement of the first 

 few shots wears off, the sport soon palls. 



In this case, however, I must confess that both 

 Jameson and myselt enjoyed the fun whilst it lasted. 

 When, after having disposed of three, we asked Lo 

 Magondi it we had not killed enough meat, he gave 

 us to understand that he had people enough to eat 

 twenty hippopotami, and begged us to kill the rest, 

 so that at any rate there was no fear of the meat 

 being allowed to go to waste, and we had the 

 satisfaction of knowing that the slaughter of these 



