THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 365 



it sinks at every step it takes ; sometimes, how- 

 ever, it is forced by famine up into the higher 

 grounds, where it commits dreadful havoc among 

 the plantations of the helpless natives, who see 

 their possessions destroyed without daring to re- 

 sist their invader. Their chief method is, by 

 lighting fires, striking drums, and raising a cry, 

 to frighten it back to its favourite element ; and 

 as it is extremely timorous upon land, they gene- 

 rally succeed in their endeavours. But if they 

 happen to wound, or otherways irritate it too 

 closely, it then becomes formidable to all that 

 oppose it: it overturns whatever it meets, and 

 exerts all its strength, which it seemed not to 

 have discovered before that dangerous occasion. 

 It possesses the same inoffensive disposition in its 

 favourite element, that it is found to have upon 

 land: it is never found to attack the mariners 

 in their boats as they go up or down the stream ; 

 but should they inadvertently strike against it, 

 or otherwise disturb its repose, there is much 

 danger of its sending them at once to the bottom. 

 " I have seen," says a mariner, as we find it in 

 Dampier, " one of these animals open its jaws, 

 and seizing a boat between his teeth, at once bite 

 and sink it to the bottom. I have seen it, upon 

 another occasion, place itself under one of our 

 boats, and rising under it, overset it with six men 

 who were in it ; who, however,, happily received 

 no other injury." Such is the great strength of 

 this animal ; and from hence, probably, the ima- 

 gination has been willing to match it in combat 

 against others more fierce, and equally formi- 



