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BEHEMOTH AND THE UNICORN. 603 



resist giving it for the contrast between the mental habitudes 

 of the two men it affords. While Harris is simply content 

 ■with givlns: a clear and effective delineation of what he sees, 

 Gumming is so egregiously beset with the mania for the pro- 

 di-gi-ous and for the amplification of his own deeds, that it is 

 evident if he had chanced to have seriously encountered 

 "rats" during his "five years in South Africa," they would 

 have been nothing short of mammoth rats — or colossal 

 at the very least. He had come upon a herd of fourteen 

 hippopotami, several of which he had already wounded and 

 lost, having made his first shot at one which temporarily 

 escaped. He says of it — 



The one I had first shot was now resting with half her 

 body above water on a sand-bank in the Limpopo. From 

 this resting-place I started her with one shot in the shoulder 

 and another in the side of the head; this last shot set 

 her in motion once more, and she commenced struggling 

 in the water in the most extraordinary manner, disappearing 

 for a few seconds, and then coming up like a great whale, 

 setting the whole river in an uproar. Presently she took 

 away down the stream, holding to the other side ; but, 

 again returning, I finished her with a shot in the middle 

 of the forehead. This proved a most magnificent specimen 

 of the female of the wondrous hippopotamus, an animal with 

 which I was extremely surprised and delighted. She far 

 surpassed the brightest conceptions I had formed of her, 

 being a larger, a more lively, and in every way a more 

 interesting animal that certain writers had led me to expect. 

 The " certain writers" alluded to so significantly, must 

 include our friend Harris, who so clearly differs with the 

 enthusiastic elephant-hunter in his admiring appreciation of 

 the sprightly graces of the sea-cow. It is always a pity 

 when doctors disagree, but it rather seems like adding insult 

 to injury on the part of Gumming, when he first steals from 

 his master Harris, and then snubs him. 



