LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A. NATURALIST. 



21 



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 

 \n 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, for one, 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 endeav- 

 ors 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 handker- 

 chief 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 some- 

 thing between grunting and neighing : the words 

 heurh, hurh, heoh-hcoh, are used by Sparrman to 

 give some idea of its cry ; the two first words 

 being uttered in a hoarse, hut sharp and tremulous 

 sound, resembling the grunting of other animals, 

 while the third or compound word is sounded ex- 

 tremely quick, and is not unlike the neighing of a 

 horse. Others describe the sound as more resem- 

 bling the bellowing of a buffalo than the neighing 

 of a horse at least, just before death. Some call 

 it snorting, some neighing, and others again 

 grunting ; and it has been likened to the deep 

 creaking of a very heavy gate or door on its 

 hinges. 



Neither of these similes convey the idea of any- 

 thing very melodious, but there can be no doubt 

 that this clumsy creature has some music in his 

 soul. 



Major Denham relates, that during the excursion 

 to Munga and the Gambarou, the party encamped 

 on the borders of a lake frequented by hippopota- 

 mi, and intended to shoot some of the huge in- 

 mates. A violent thunder-storm prevented their 

 sport ; but next morning they had a full opportu- 

 nity of convincing themselves that these uncouth 

 animals are not only not insensible to musical 

 sounds, but strongly attracted to them, as seals 

 are said to be, even though the music should not 

 possess the softness and sweetness of the Lydian 

 measure. As the major and his suite passed along 

 the borders of the Lake Muggaby at sunrise, the 

 hippopotami followed the drums of the different 

 chiefs the whole length of the water, sometimes 

 approaching so close to the shore that the water 

 they spouted from their mouths reached the persons 

 who were passing along the banks. Major Den- 

 ham counted fifteen at one time sporting on the 

 surface ; and his servant Columbus shot one of 

 them in the head, when he gave so loud a roar as 



he buried himself in the lake that all the others 

 disappeared in an instant. 



But whatever may be thought of the snortings 

 and neighings of this See-pferd, all agree that it 

 deserves the more appetizing name of Wasser ochs, 

 when the sapid excellence of its flesh is consid- 

 ered. The Sea-cow's speck, in other words, the 

 layer of fat which lies immediately below the 

 skin, salted and dried, is highly prized by the 

 Cape Town epicure. Of the teeth, Odoardus 

 Barbosa justly saith, " Hanno gli ippopotami i 

 denti, come gli elefante piccoli et e migliore 

 avorio di quello de gli elefanti, e piti bianco, e 

 piCk forte, e di maniera che non perde il colore." 

 For this last reason the ivory of the canine teeth 

 is highly valued by the manufacturers of those 

 pearly rows which the artist knows so well how 

 to form when he makes the beautiful dental series 

 of rosy eighteen appear between the withered lips 

 of eighty. Nor were the ancients ignorant of its 

 value in a somewhat higher branch of art. Pau- 

 sanius relates that the face of Cybele was formed 

 of the teeth of these animals. 



The tough skin in ancient times was fashioned 

 into helmets and bucklers. " The skin or hide of 

 his backe is unpenetrable, (whereof are made tar- 

 guets and head-pieces of doubty proof that no 

 weapon wil pierce,) unlesse it be soked in water 

 or some liquor," saith the worthy Philemon Hol- 

 land, in his translation of Pliny. It is, in these 

 modern days, made into whips, and with these 

 instruments terrible punishments, not unfrequently 

 fatal, like the Russian knout, are inflicted. 



Major Denham makes one shudder when he 

 describes the execution o'f one of those wickedly 

 hypocritical judgments, which, affecting to- avoid 

 a sentence of death, inflicts it in one of its- most 

 agonizing forms. 



Oppressively hot as the weather was, the sheikh,, 

 he states, admitted of no excuse for breaking the 

 Rhamadan, and any man who was caught suffering 

 his thirst to get the better of him in an African 

 June, or visiting his wives between sunrise and 

 sunset, was sentenced to 400 stripes with one of 

 these deadly whips. 



A wretched woman bore two hundred stripes 

 the number to which she was sentenced within 

 the courtyard of the palace, and was afterwards 

 carried home senseless. 



Her paramour received his punishment in the 

 dender or square, suspended by a cloth round his 

 middle his only covering and supported by 

 eight men. An immense whip of one thick thong 

 cut from the skin of the hippopotamus was first 

 shown to him, which he was obliged to kiss and 

 acknowledge the justice of his sentence. Tho 

 fatah was then said aloud, and two powerful slaves 

 of the sheikh inflicted four hundred stripes, reliev- 

 ing each other every thirty or forty strokes. 

 " They strike," says the major, " on the back, 

 while the end of the whip, which has a knob or 

 head, winds round and falls on the breast or upper 

 stomach : this it is that renders these punishments 



