THE PIG AND HIPPOPOTAMUS 



323 



pleasantest thing to sit on in deep 

 water with crocodiles about, especially 

 in a wind, as it is very much like 

 sitting on a floating barrel, and unless 

 the balance is exactly maintained one 

 is bound to roll off. 



Although it is often necessary 

 for an African traveler to shoot one 

 or more of them in order to obtain 

 a supply of meat for his native 

 followers, there is not much sport 

 attached to the killing of these animals. 

 The modern small-bore rifles, with 

 their low trajectory and great pene- 

 tration, render their destruction very 

 easy when they are encountered in 

 small lakes or narrow rivers, though 

 in larger sheets of water, where they 

 must be approached and shot from 

 rickety canoes, it is by no means a 

 simple matter to kill hippopotamuses, 

 especially after they have grown shy 

 and wary through persecution. As 



these animals are almost invariably DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS 

 killed by Europeans in the daytime, 



j ,, r , . ., This shows the process of filing one of the lower tusks ' 



and are therefore encountered in the 



water, they are usually shot through the brain as they raise their heads above the surface to 

 breathe. By the natives hippopotamuses are killed in various ways. They are sometimes 

 attacked first with harpoons, to which long lines are attached, with a float at the end to mark 

 the position of the wounded animal, and then followed up in canoes and finally speared to 



death. Sometimes they are caught in huge 

 pitfalls, or killed by the fall of a spear-head 

 fixed in a heavy block of wood, which is re- 

 leased from its position when a line, attached 

 to the weight and then pegged across a 

 hippopotamus's path a few inches above the 

 ground, is suddenly pulled by the feet of 

 one of these animals striking against it. A 

 friend of mine once had a horse killed under 

 him by a similar trap set for buffaloes. His 

 horse's feet struck the line attached to the 

 heavily weighted spear-head, and down it 

 came, just missing his head and entering his 

 horse's back close behind the saddle. Where 

 the natives have guns mostly old muzzle- 

 loading weapons of large bore they often 

 shoot hippopotamuses at close quarters when 

 they are feeding at night. The most destruc- 

 tive native method, however, of killing these 



NO. in monsters with which I am acquainted is one 



DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS which used to be practised by the natives 

 Sawing off one of the lower tusks of Northern Mashonaland namely, fencing in 



