The Common Hippopotamus 539 



will not rise to the surface for six hours, or sometimes even longer. When 

 the water is warm the carcase will rise in about three hours. The natives 

 armed with guns shoot too badly as a rule to be able to hit hippopotami in 

 the brain, as they lie in the rivers during the day-time, but they kill a good 

 many by shooting them in the body as they come out to feed at nights. 

 Before they had guns, and where they still have no guns, the natives kill 

 hippopotami in various ways. Pitfalls are often dug in their paths, or 

 dreadful traps set over them, but they become wonderfully cunning, and 

 but few, I believe, are killed by these means. In the Zambesi and other 

 large rivers many are harpooned ; but the cruellest and at the same time 

 the most destructive method of killing hippopotami that I ever heard of 

 was that formerly practised by the natives of Northern Mashunaland, who 

 used to starve whole herds of these animals to death. To accomplish this 

 work of destruction a whole tribe would co-operate, and, having found a 

 herd of hippopotami in a suitable pool, would fence it in, and, by keeping 

 up fires all night and beating drums, prevent the imprisoned animals from 

 breaking out, and then slowly starve them to death. I once, whilst 

 journeying along the course of the Ummati River, came upon a native tribe 

 engaged in destroying a herd of hippopotami in this way. When I reached 

 the scene of operations there were still ten hippopotami alive in the pool. 

 Of these, eight were standing on a submerged sand-bank with more than half 

 their bodies above the water, all huddled together with their heads resting on 

 one another's bodies. Two more were swimming round, each with a heavy 

 assegai sticking in its back ; whilst several must already have been killed 

 or starved to death, as an immense quantity of meat was hanging in festoons 

 on the trees all round the pool. From what I could learn, this pool had 

 been enclosed for about three weeks, during which time the natives said 

 that the hippopotami had had nothing to eat but water. Altogether I 

 think that a herd of at least twenty must have been destroyed on this 

 occasion. The flesh of these animals, however, supplied a whole tribe with 



