THE BIG GAME OF AFRICA 



ing several times in East Africa during 1909, and who 

 most kindly invited me to join his shooting expedition, 

 when near Lake Naivasha, told me of a most interesting 

 experience he had had with a big hippo in that lake. As 

 soon as the beast had been wounded, he charged down on 

 Colonel Roosevelt, who, with his son Kermit and a few 

 negro hunters, had gone out hippo shooting in a good- 

 sized rowboat. With open jaws and terrible snorts, the 

 big monster made for Colonel Roosevelt's boat as quickly 

 as he could, only to receive two deadly shots from the 

 colonel's heavy Express rifle right in his very mouth, while 

 Kermit was lucky enough to secure a couple of fairly good 

 photographs from the charging beast. This incident has 

 since then been published at length. 



A German official, a Mr. C. E. Schmidt, was nearly 

 killed by a hippo in the Rufiji River in German East 

 Africa under most curious circumstances. With another 

 white man and eight natives he was out hippo shooting in 

 the above-named big stream, at a place where the river 

 widens out considerably, and where the waters were lit- 

 erally alive with the big pachyderms. 



The whole party had embarked in a good-sized rowboat 

 to tow ashore the bodies of two large hippos that had been 

 killed only about half an hour before, but which had 

 already appeared on the surface. Mr. Schmidt had taken 

 with him a very long and strong rope, to which they 

 fastened both bodies. Hardly had the men begun to 

 row the boat toward the nearby shore, having only about 

 twenty to thirty yards more to cover, and before they 

 reached a good landing place, an immense hippo suddenly 

 rushed for the boat so quickly that before the sportsman 



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