534 Great and Small Game of Africa 



preserved in Sea Cow Lake near Durban, Natal, as it was found impossible to 

 preserve them any longer owing to the damage they did in the neighbouring 

 sugar plantations. As civilisation advances, hippopotami as well as all other 

 wild animals must gradually give way before it ; and, it not protected, will 

 soon completely disappear within the areas occupied by a settled European 

 population. In Africa south of the Zambesi, however, hippopotami used 

 to be plentiful not many years ago in every lake and river on the east coast, 

 from Zululand to the Zambesi, along the greater part of the course of the 

 Limpopo, and in almost every river in all the vast territory between the 

 latter and the Zambesi. They were also abundant in the Chobi and 

 the Botletlie. During my various journeys I find that I have travelled 

 along the course of the Zambesi for about iooo miles between the Barotsi 

 valley and the sea ; but although I met with hippopotami in almost every 

 part of the river, I only found these animals really numerous in two places — 

 near Sekhosi, about 40 miles above the junction of the Zambesi with the 

 Chobi, and below the Kariba gorge, in which latter district I saw, in 

 November 1 877, over a hundred hippopotami, in herds of fifteen or twenty 

 together, in the course of less than a couple of miles. Hippopotami used to 

 be plentiful in many of the rivers intersecting Matabeleland and Mashuna- 

 land, especially in the Umniati and its tributaries on the northern watershed, 

 and in the Lunti to the south. Up to December 1893 a large herd of 

 these animals used to frequent the deep pools of the Umzingwani River, 

 about 40 miles south of Bulawayo. These animals had been protected for 

 many years by Lo Bengula and his father Umziligazi before him, and 

 although one or two were occasionally shot by order of the king, and their 

 dismembered carcases brought by waggon to his head kraal, none of his 

 people were allowed to molest them without his orders, under pain of death ; 

 and thus they became very tame and confiding, and were accustomed to 

 commit great havoc in the corn-fields of the natives living near the pools 

 they frequented. Within a few months of the conquest of Matabeleland 



