78 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



the tide had run clean out, only pools and reaches, 

 connecting by shallow runnels the volume of the 

 natural stream, remained for the hippopotami to sport 

 about in ; and my manoeuvring in these confined 

 places became so irritating, that a large female came 

 rapidly under water to the stern of the canoe, and 

 gave it such a sudden and violent cant with her head 

 or withers, that that end of the vessel shot up in the 

 air, and sent me sprawling on my back, with my legs 

 forced up by the seat a bar of wood at right angles 

 to my body ; whilst the poler and the big double gun 

 were driven like a pair of shuttlecocks, flying right 

 and left of the canoe high up into the air. The gun 

 on one side fell plump into the middle of the stream, 

 and the man on the other dropped, post first, on to 

 the hippopotamus's back, but rapidly scrambled back 

 into the canoe. The hippopotamus then, as is these 

 animals' wont, renewed the attack, but I was ready to 

 receive her, and as she came rolling porpoise-fashion 

 close by the side of the canoe, I fired a quarter of a 

 pound of lead, backed by four drams of powder, into 

 the middle of her back, the muzzle of the rifle almost 

 touching it. She then sank, and I never saw her 

 more ; but the gun (after lying on the sandy bottom 

 the whole of that night), I managed, by the aid of 

 several divers, to find on the following day. 



Bombay says that on one occasion, when coming 

 down the Pangani river in a canoe with several other 

 men, an irritated hippopotamus charged and upset it, 



