THE PACHYDERMS 73 



allowed to be in possession of rhinoceros horns. 

 From these sword handles and drinking cups are 

 manufactured. The cups thus made are popularly 

 supposed tp detect the presence, or neutralise the 

 effect of poison poured into them. This is a very 

 ancient, but, of course, utterly baseless superstition, 

 which obtains still in India, and was not unknown 

 in Italy and other countries of Europe during the 

 Middle Ages. 



THE HIPPOPOTAMUS 



Hippopotami are still found in most rivers of the 

 African interior. A few schools still linger in the 

 Orange River, in that wild and almost unknown 

 western region, never yet explored by the white man, 

 where for more than three hundred miles the great 

 river, running seawards, below the Augrabies Falls, 

 is shut in by vast mountain cliffs, which render it 

 almost completely inaccessible to the human eye. A 

 few yet remain in the eastern reaches of the Limpopo 

 river. Beyond the Limpopo they are found in some 

 few rivers of South-Eastern Africa, including the 

 Busi, Pungwe, and others. From the Shire and 

 Zambesi, northwards to the Upper Nile waters and 

 the rivers and lakes of Abyssinia, these unwieldy 

 monsters are to be met with in most parts of Africa 

 in more or less abundance. I found them on the Bot- 

 letli river, Ngamiland, in 1890, and they are still to 

 be met with in that river, in the Chobi, the Okavango, 

 the Cunene, and other systems of South, Central, and 



