JUJA FARM; HIPPO AND LEOPARD 121 



final charge; but they inflicted no such smashing blow as 

 the heavy bullets of the Holland. Moreover, when they 

 struck the heavy bones they tended to break into frag- 

 ments, while the big Holland bullets ploughed through. 

 The Winchester and the Springfield were the weapons 

 one of which I always carried in my own hand, and for 

 any ordinary game I much preferred them to any other 

 rifles. The Winchester did admirably with lions, giraffes, 

 elands, and smaller game, and, as will be seen, with hippos. 

 For heavy game like rhinoceroses and buffaloes, I found 

 that for me personally the heavy Holland was unquestion- 

 ably the proper weapon. But in writing this I wish most 

 distinctly to assert my full knowledge of the fact that the 

 choice of a rifle is almost as much a matter of personal 

 idiosyncrasy as the choice of a friend. The above must 

 be taken as merely the expression of my personal pref- 

 erences. It will doubtless arouse as much objection among 

 the ultra-champions of one type of gun as among the ultra- 

 champions of another. The truth is that any good mod- 

 ern rifle is good enough. The determining factor is the 

 man behind the gun. 



In the afternoon of the day on which we killed the rhino 

 Judd took me out again to try for hippos, this time in the 

 Rewero, which ran close by the house. We rode upstream 

 a couple of miles. Then we sent back our horses and 

 walked down the river bank as quietly as possible, Judd 

 scanning the pools, and the eddies in the running stream, 

 from every point of vantage. Once we aroused a crocodile, 

 which plunged into the water. The stream was full of 

 fish, some of considerable size; and in the meadow land on 

 our side we saw a gang of big, black wild-geese feeding. 



