97 



HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



a camel. 2, that the River-Horse is an inveterate enemy to the Cro- 

 codile, and kills it whenever he meets it. 3, that the River-Horse 

 never appears below the cataracts in Egypt,* wherefore the inhabit- 

 ants of Upper Egypt only can give any account of it. The Egyptians, 

 he adds, very seldom bring the hide of it to Cairo ; and, he continues, 

 it is impossible to bring thither the living animal. 4, the River- 

 Horse does much damage to the Egyptians in those places he fre- 

 quents. He goes on shore, and in a short space of time destroys an 

 entire field of corn or clover, not leaving the least verdure as he 

 passes ; for he is voracious, and requires much to fill his great belly. 

 They have a curious manner of freeing themselves, in some measure, 

 from this destructive animal : they remark the places he frequents 

 most, and there lay a large quantity of peas ; when the beast comes 

 on shore, hungry and voracious, he falls to eating what is nearest him, 

 and filling his belly with the peas, they occasion an insupportable 

 thirst ; he then returns immediately into the river, and drinks upon 

 these dry peas large draughts of water, which suddenly causes his 

 death ; for the peas soon begin to swell with the water, and not long 

 after the Egytians find him dead on the shore, blown up, as if killed 

 by the strongest poison. 5, the oftener the River-Horse goes on 

 shore, the better hopes have the Egyptians of a sufficient swelling or 

 increase of the Nile. 6, the Egyptians say, that they can almost dis- 

 tinguish the food of this animal in his excrements." Some parts of 

 this relation (that regarding the peas, for instance) may be considered 

 as bordering upon the marvellous, but there are others which there 

 seems to be no good reason for doubting. The alleged enmity to the 

 Crocodile can hardly be considered to be well founded. 



In Professor Smith's 'Journal' (Tuckey's 'Narrative of an Expe- 

 dition to explore the River Zaire, usually called the Congo, in South 

 Africa ') we find it stated that they " landed in a beautiful sandy cove 

 at the opening of a creek behind a long projecting point. It is called 

 Samii-Sundi. An immense number of Hippopotami were seen here. In 

 the evening a number of Alligators were also seen." This association 

 would be hardly consistent with hostility. Captain Tuckey also says, 

 " The Hippopotamus and Alligator seem to be numerous." The usual 

 mode of capturing the animal is by a pitfall, by the natives at least, 

 but the colonists near the Cape use the rifle. The two killed by 

 ZerenKhi, in the year 1 600, frequented the neighbourhood of the Nile, 

 near Damietta. He stationed men upon the Nile, who, having seen 

 two of these animals go out of the river, made a large ditch in the 

 way through which they passed, and covered it with thin planks, 

 earth, and herbage. In the evening, when returning to the river, 

 they both fell into the ditch. Zerenshi immediately hastened to the 

 place with his janizary, and they killed both the beasts by pouring 

 three shot into the head of each with a large arquebus. They almost 

 instantly expired, he adds, after uttering a cry which had more resem- 

 blance to the bellowing of a buffalo than to the neighing of a horse. 

 Captain Tuckey observed Hippopotami with their heads above the water, 

 " snorting in the air." In another part of his ' Narrative,' he says, 

 " Many Hippopotami were visible close to our tents at Condo Yanga, 

 where we were obliged to halt, and to wait some time for a canoe to 

 pass. No use firing at these animals in the water ; the only way is to 

 wait till they come on shore to feed at night. During the night they 

 kept a continual grunting like so many hogs, but none of them came 

 on shore, though we had a constant watch on the beach." Sparrman, 

 who gives a ludicrous account of the terror which seized him and 

 some of his companions on the rush of one of these animals towards 

 him from the river, thus describes the noise made by one of these 

 ' sea-cows ' at Great Fish River : " At half an hour after eight, it 

 being already very dark, a sea-cow began at intervals to raise its head 

 above the water, and utter a sharp, piercing, and, as it were, very 

 angry cry, which seemed to be between grunting and neighing. 

 Perhaps this cry may be best expressed by the words ' heurh, hurh, 

 heoh-heoh : ' the two first being uttered slowly, in a hoarse but sharp 

 and tremulous sound, resembling the grunting of other animals; 

 while the third, or compound word, is sounded extremely quick, and 

 is not unlike the neighing of a horse. It is true, it is impossible to 

 express these inarticulate sounds in writing to any great degree of 

 perfection ; but perhaps one may make nearer approaches to it than 

 one can to the gutturopalatial sounds of the Hottentot language." 

 Le Vaillant ha/1 an opportunity of watching the progress of a hippo- 

 potamus under water at Great River. " This river," says he, " con- 

 t.iirii-d many hippopotami ; on all sides I could hear them bellow and 

 blow (mugir et souffler). Anxious to observe them, I mounted on the 

 top of an elevated rock which advanced into the river, and I saw one 

 walking at the bottom of the water (marcher et se promener au fond 

 de 1'eau). But I remarked that its colour, which when it is dry is 

 grayish, and when it is only humid and moist appears bluish, seemed 

 then to be of a deep blue. I killed it at the moment when it came to 

 the surface to breathe. It was a very old female, and my people in 

 their surprise, and to express its size, called it the ' grandmother of 

 the river.' " (' Second Voyage.') Mr. Barrow, in his journey into 

 the interior of Southern Africa, when he reached the mouth of the 

 Great Finn River, saw towards the evening a vast number of Hippo- 

 potami (Sea-Cows of the Dutch) with their heads above the surface. 

 Several paths made by these animals led from various parts of the 



* That it wa found in Lower F.frjpt in the rear 1600 appear* by Xorenghi'n 

 Wfonnt above frircn. llaMvlquint travelled in the yearn 1749-52. 



WAT. HIST. DIV. VOL. III. 



river to a spring of fresh water about a mile distant. To this spring 

 they went in the night to drink ; the water of the river for some dis- 

 tance from the mouth being salt. According to Dampier and others, 

 the Hippopotamus, when wounded or irritated, is violently ferocious, 

 and has been known to sink a boat by its bite. 



For a long time it was considered that there was but one species of 

 living Hippopotamus ; but some naturalists are of opinion that there 

 are at least two. Before we enter into this part of the subject we 

 shall give a slight sketch of the history of the Hippopotamus from 

 the time of the ancients. 



If the Hippopotamus be the Behemoth of Job (ch. xl.), we must 

 refer to the well-known verses 15 to 19, both inclusive, as the earliest 

 description of the animal. But the identity is by no means satisfac- 

 torily ascertained. The vulgate uses the term Behemoth, and the 

 Zurich version translates the word by ' Elephas.' In the edition of 

 the Bible, ' imprinted at London by Robert Barker, printer to the 

 King's most excellent Majestie ' (1615), Behemoth is the word iu the 

 text, with the following annotation : " This beast is thought to bee 

 the elephant, or some other which is unknowen." Bochart, Ludolph, 

 Scheuchzer, and many others hold that the Hippopotamus is the 

 animal meant ; while not a few of the learned have written in support 

 of the Elephant. Cuvier and others think that though we may 

 believe with Bochart that the Hippopotamus is intended, the descrip- 

 tion in the book of Job is too vague to characterise it. Good comes 

 to the conclusion that some extinct pachydermatous genus was pro- 

 bably represented by the term ; and some have lately even gone so 

 far as to contend that Behemoth and the Iguanodon of geologists are 

 identical ! 



Herodotus (ii. 71) gives a most incorrect description of what must be 

 regarded, from the context and other evidence, as the Hippopotamus. 

 This description is borrowed almost entirely by Aristotle, who has 

 not however given to the animal a horse's tail, which Herodotus 

 bestowed upon it ; adding, correctly enough, that its size was that of 

 the largest oxen. 



Aristotle (' Hist. Anim.,' book ii. chap, vii.) thus describes the Hip- 

 popotamus : " The Hippopotamus of Egypt has a mane like a horse ; 

 a bifurcated hoof like the ox ; a flat visage or muzzle ; an astragalus 

 like the animals with cloven feet ; projecting teeth which do not show 

 themselves much ; the tail of a hog ; the voice of a horse ; and in size 

 it resembles an ass. Its skin is of Buch a thickness that spears are 

 made of it." Now, there is enough in this curious description to lead 

 to the conclusion that Aristotle meant no other than the Hippopota- 

 mus ; there is also quite sufficient to show that he never saw the 

 animal, and that he trusted to the wild accounts of others. We trace 

 however the descriptions of Herodotus and Aristotle in many of the 

 figures of the animal which were published after the revival of letters ; 

 for it is worthy of remark that notwithstanding the highly erroneous 

 descriptions of ancient authors, some of whom must, one would think, 

 have had an opportunity of seeing the animal, the portraits of it by 

 ancient artists on coins, &c., are, almost without exception, far from 

 bad representations of the animal. But to return to the ancient 

 authors. 



Diodorus (book i.) comes much nearer to the truth in his descrip- 

 tion, at least as to the size of the Hippopotamus ; for he says that it 

 is five cubits in length, and in bulk approaches to that of the 

 Elephant. The teeth are not badly characterised by the same 

 author; but he still leaves to the animal the cloven hoof and the 

 horse's tail. 



Pliny says of it (book viii. 25), after treating of the Crocodile and 

 Scincus, "Major altitudine in eodem Nilo belua hippopotamus editur,' ' 

 and he gives it the bifid hoofs of the ox, the back, mane, and neigh 

 of the horse, a flattened muzzle, the tail and teeth of the boar, 

 adding, that though they are hooked they are less noxious " ungulis 

 bifidi qu\les bubus, dorso equi, et juba, et hinnitu, rostro resimo, 

 caudd et dentibus aprorum, aduncis, sed minus noxiis." In short he 

 seems to have followed with very little exception the account given 

 by Aristotle, without attending to that of Diodorus. Pliny adds, 

 that helmets and bucklers are made of its skin, which are impene- 

 trable unless they are softened by moisture, and ho speaks of it* 

 feeding on the crops "depascitur segetes," and its caution in avoiding 

 snares. In his 9th book and 12th chapter, on the covering of aquatic 

 animals (' Tegmenta Aquatilium'), the varieties of which he enumerates, 

 he says, " Alia corio et pilis teguntur, ut vituli et hippopotami ; " 

 thus making it hairy like the seals, which we take to be meant by 

 ' vituli ; ' and yet, with all this monstrous error, he himself (book 

 viii. 26) speaks of M. Scaurus as being the first who had shown the 

 hippopotamus, together with five crocodiles, at Rome, during his 

 aidileship ; finishing the account however by making the former 

 animal a master of one department in the art of healing, in conse- 

 quence of his habit of letting blood by pressing the vein of his leg 

 against some very sharp stake when his obesity requires such relief. 

 We know moreover that Augustus exhibited one of these animals on 

 occasion of his triumph over Cleopatra. (Dion., book Ii.). We shall 

 only further refer to the account of Achilles Tatius (book iv. 2), 

 which is, notwithstanding some errors, perhaps the most correct ; and 

 shall proceed to notice that, under the later emperors, a considerable 

 number of Hippopotami were introduced into the Roman shows. 

 Thus Antoninus exhibited some, with crocodiles, tigers, and other 



11 



