SPORT IN MOZAMBIQUE 



is with difficulty that I am able to acquire for my wife 

 and some of her friends a small quantity of the plumes. 



All night long we hear the hippopotamuses snorting ; 

 it is a fortunate time for them — that of the floods, 

 they can bathe at their ease. On the 12th of March 

 a big male came close up to the fires of the boat 

 grunting. I ask myself whether he is going to attack 

 the boat, but I do not give him time, for I shoot him 

 in the head at four yards' distance, and on the morrow 

 we find him dead stranded among the reeds. This 

 and a civet, which I caught in a trap, are the only 

 mammals I kill j but I also shoot a crocodile and a 

 number of monitors. 



As the water lowers we are compelled to come to 

 anchor in the Urema. On the night of the 20th of 

 March we are awakened by a snorting followed by 

 a terrible shock. The boat seems for a moment to 

 be crushed. It is an enormous accumulation of 

 water-plants, some two hundred yards long by fifty 

 yards in width, and of great thickness, which is 

 floating by. It is fortunate that we are in a bend, 

 and that the mass merely^rubs us, without dragging 

 us down with it. As a matter of fact, the Urema, 

 during the months from May to January is scarcely 

 navigable for more than four miles, the rest of its 

 course being completely choked with the annual 

 growth of aquatic vegetation. When the floods come 

 the moorings of these floating plants break, and at 

 the close of the inundation the whole accumulation 



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