With Flashlight and Rifle -+> 



shot which was not immediately fatal, he made for a small 

 lake behind me instead of a far larger one in front of 

 me. On he came in my direction at an alarmingly quick 

 gallop. I owed my escape only to the second shot which 

 I fired, and which made him turn aside and then stumble 

 and fall dead, for with my third shot my rifle missed 

 fire! 



In another case a hippopotamus I shot on land at a 

 few yards' distance stood up, opened wide his mouth, 

 literally bristling with teeth, and sank down with a flop, 

 dead a sight I should have liked to photograph if only 

 I had had my camera available at the moment. 



The curiosity displayed by hippopotamuses is remarkable. 

 The natives often attract the animals to the shore by 

 playing upon this weakness of theirs. Captain Merker 

 told me that the natives are in the habit of calling 

 out to them " Makau ! Makau ! " on hearing which whole 

 "schools" of hippopotamuses come swimming up. I myself 

 have witnessed scenes of this kind on the Merker Lakes. 



" Makau " (plural " El Makaunin ") the Masai name 

 for the hippopotamus, is a clear indication, as Captain 

 Merker writes me, of the Masai having wandered over 

 the Nile valley. Merker says he could find no similar 

 word among the names given to animals in any of the 

 still living Semitic lano-ua^es known to him. At last 



o o o 



he found a key to its origin in the Assyrian word 

 ma-ak-ka-nn-2i, "beast of Southern Egypt." 



I cannot deny that in my attempts at navigating 

 African lakes and rivers in fragile canvas-boats I 

 experienced a good deal of nervousness in regard to 



276 



