62 LEAVES FROM THE 



expressive of the ruin occasioned to his crops by these 

 enormous reapers. They were regarded as the symbol 

 of the destruction-dealing Typhon, and were worshipped, 

 as some nations worship the devil, from the terror which 

 they inspired. In modern times, every settler and every 

 native makes war upon them. Pit-falls, ambushes, the rifle, 

 are ready for them wherever they make their appearance ; 

 to say nothing of the old and somewhat apocryphal 

 story of laying lots of dried peas in their way — rather 

 an expensive proceeding one should think — which these 

 gluttonous giants devour, and then drinking copiously, 

 the peas swell within them till they burst. The beast 

 had his revenge sometimes ; and Sparrman was in such 

 a parlous fear, when one came out of the stream upon 

 his party, with a hideous cry, and ' as swift as an arrow 

 from a bow,' that he thought the river had overflowed 

 its banks, and that he should be drowned. After this 

 confession, he thus endeavours to account for the strange 

 impression : — ^ As the hippopotamus,' says he, ' when it 

 is newly come up out of the water, and is wet and slimy, 

 is said to glisten in the moonshine like a fish, it is no 

 wonder that as soon as I took my handkerchief from 

 before my eyes, it should appear to me, at so near a 

 view as I had of it, like a column of water, which 

 seemed to threaten to carry us off and drown us in a 

 moment.' 



The voice of the animal is described as something be- 

 tween grunting and neighing ; the words heurh, hurh, 

 heoJi-heoh, are used by Sparrman to give some idea of its 

 cry ; the two first words being uttered in a hoarse, but 

 sharp and tremulous sound, resembling the grunting of 

 other animals, while the third or compound word is 



states, in the same z-'-At, that these animals devastated M^hole 

 tracts of country, and were as formidable enemies to man as the 

 crocodile. 



