62 LEAVES FROM THE 



expressive of tlie 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 inspu'ed. 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 gi'unting and neighing ; the words heurh, liurh, 

 heoh-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 thhd or compound word is 



states, in the same spii'it, that these animals devastated whole 

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

 crocodile. 



