496 HISTORY or 



CHAP. IV. 



THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



The Hippopotamus is an animal as large, and not less for- 

 midable, than the rhinoceros ; its legs are shorter, and its bead 

 rather more bulky tban that of the animal last described. We 

 have had but few opportunities in Europe of examining this for- 

 midable creature minutely; its dimensions, however, have been 

 pretty well ascertained, by a description given us by Zerengbi, 

 an Italian surgeon, who procured one of them to be killed on the 

 banks of the river Nile. By his account it appears, that this 

 terrible animal, which chiefly resides in the waters of that river, is 

 above seventeen feet long from the extremity of the snout to the 

 insertion of the tail ; above sixteen feet in circumference round 

 the body, and above seven feet high : the head is near four feet 

 long, and above nine feet in circumference. The jaws open 

 about two feet wide, and the cutting-teeth, of which it hath 

 four in each jaw, are above a foot long. 



Its feet, in some measure, resemble those of the elephant, and 

 are divided into four parts. The tail is short, flat, and pointed ; 

 the hide is amazingly thick, and though not capable of turnmg a 

 musket-ball, is impenetrable to the blow of a sabre ; the body is 

 covered over with a few scattered hairs of a whitish colour. 

 The whole figure of the animal is something between that of an 

 ox and a hog, and its cry is something between the bellowing of 

 the one and the grunting of the other. 



This animal, however, though so terribly furnished for war, 

 seems no way disposed to make use of its prodigious strength 

 against an equal enemy ; it chiefly resides at the bottom of the 

 great rivers and lakes of Africa, the Nile, the Niger, and the 



the Chinese. It is a very odd shaped beast ; it is of the big-ness of a large 

 ox, with a snout like a hog-, having two long rough ears, and thick bushy 

 tail; the eyes are placed upright in the head, quite diiferent from other 

 beasts ; on the sides of the liead, next to the eyes, stand two long horns, or 

 rather tusks, not quite so thick as those of the elephant. The feet are each 

 armed with four knobs, or half hoofs, on their fore parts ; the nose is very 

 broad, and truncated ; the ears very lai'ge, and slouching ; the tail covered 

 with flowing hairs, and reaches lower than the middle of the hind legs ; the 

 skin is smooth, and entirely free from plaits, like those on the one-horned 

 rhinoceros. It feeds on herbage and is but seldom taken. 



