HIPPOS AT PLAY 113 



from the shore. On a still day it is an amusing 

 pastime to sit by the lake and watch the great 

 brutes enjoying themselves. For a moment nothing 

 is to be seen, then suddenly a score or more of huge 

 heads burst through the surface with loud snorts, 

 and squirting jets of water through their nostrils. 

 They stare round with their ugly little pig-like eyes, 

 yawn prodigiously, showing a fearful array of tusks 

 and a cavernous throat, and sink with a satisfied 

 gurgle out of sight, to repeat the performance a 

 minute or two afterwards. Sometimes one stands 

 almost upright in the water, then he rolls over with 

 a sounding splash, showing a broad expanse of back 

 like a huge porpoise ; or a too venturesome young 

 bachelor approaches a select circle of veterans, who 

 resent his intrusion and drive him away with 

 roars and grunts. There is something irresistibly 

 suggestive of humanity about their ungainly gambols, 

 only bathing-machines are wanted to complete the 

 picture. 



Another remarkable feature of Kikarongo is the 

 extraordinary quantity of fish it contains. For 

 several yards from the shore the shallow water 

 is a seething mass of small fish a few inches long, 

 most of them in a dying condition, and the majority 

 of them (from some cause that I was unable to dis- 

 cover) blind in one or both eyes. Mr. Scott Elliot, 

 who visited the place in 1894, found a stream 

 running into the lake;* but, though I walked 

 -•■ 'A Naturalist in Mid-Africa,' p. 127. 



