202 SAVAGE SUDAN 



a hippopotamus. Investigation promptly showed that 

 these swamp-strongholds, though miles from the river, 

 were crowded with the great amphibians. Therein, in 

 fastnesses untrodden, protected by armoured jungle, and 

 sheltered from the sun above by overarching papyrus, 

 whole herds are wont to spend archaic lives a custom 

 that elsewhere throughout Africa has long become obsolete. 



The entrance to each lair was precisely indicated 

 by the broken-down trails that led inwards ; and that 

 the owner was "at home" quickly proved by throwing 

 in a clod one beast I actually poked up with my stick. 

 At one point, a big tunnel invited further exploration, 

 and Baraka and I followed it into the prehistoric 

 precincts. In the dim light within never high enough 

 to stand upright we perceived a stagnant waterway, 

 or series of pools, both sides of which were sculptured 

 with the "beds" of hippopotami. These, being made 

 when the mud was soft and plastic, resembled in size and 

 shape the "cast " of a dinghy. There was an asphyxiating 

 odour partly the exhalation of mephitic water ; chiefly, 

 I suspected, the personal aroma of generations of hippo- 

 potami which during ages had dwelt herein without 

 having learnt even though through adversity the 

 charm of daily ablutions. Save for the smell, I felt 

 it was good to stand in that dim under-world. Those 

 few minutes therein, we spent right outside the limits 

 of the world we know ; within the romance of the 

 Pleistocene, when prehistoric monsters which neither 

 knew nor feared man, possessed the planet. 



We found another hippo-colony, similar to this, on the 

 shores of Lake No. Apparently these huge amphibians, 

 provided they can discover some retreat absolutely secure 

 from molestation, are prepared to adopt (or retain) more 

 terrestrial habits than is their normal wont to-day. It 

 is these inland hippos which resort to the river for a 

 drink after dark which explains a fact which at first 

 had puzzled us (see p. 197). 



