420 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



ceases to be wide-awake at the approach of danger. Being 

 vulnerable only behind the ear, however, or in the eye, it 

 requires the perfection of rifle-practice to be hit ; and when 

 once in the water, is still more difficult to kill, as it dives and 

 swims with all the ease of a walrus, its huge body being 

 rendered buoyant by an abundance of fat. Its flesh is said to 

 be delicious, resembling the finest young pork, and is con- 

 sidered as great a delicacy in Africa as a bear's paw or a bison's 

 hump in the prairies of North America. The thick and almost 

 inflexible hide may be dragged from the ribs in strips, like the 

 planks from a ship's side. These serve for the manufacture of 

 a superior description of sjambok^ the elastic whip with which 

 the Cape boor governs his team of twelve oxen or more, while 

 proceeding on a journey. In Northern Africa it is used to 

 chastise refractory dromedaries or servants ; and the ancient 

 Egyptians employed it largely in the manufacture of shields, 

 helmets, and javelins. 



But the most valuable part of the hippopotamus is its teeth 

 (canine and incisors), which are considered greatly superior to 

 elephant ivory, and, when perfect and weighty, will fetch as 

 much as one guinea per pound, being chiefly used for artificial 

 teeth, since it does not readily turn yellow. All these uses to 

 which the hippopotamus may be applied are naturally as many 

 prices set upon its head ; and the ravages it occasions in the 

 fields are another motive for its destruction. On the White 

 Nile the peasantry burn a number of fires, to scare the huge 

 animal from their plantations, where every footstep ploughs 

 deep furrows into the marshy ground. At the same time, they 

 keep up a prodigious clamour of horns and drums, to terrify 

 the ruinous brute, which, as may well be imagined, is by no 

 means so great a favourite with them as with the visitors of 

 the Zoological Grardens. 



They have besides another, and, where it succeeds, a far more 

 efficacious method of freeing themselves from its depredations. 

 They remark the places it most frequents, and there lay a large 

 quantity of pease. When it comes on shore, hungry and vora- 

 cious, it falls to eating what is nearest, and fills its vast stomach 

 with the pease, which soon occasion an insupportable thirst. 

 The river being close at hand, it immediately drinks whole 



