540 Great and Small Game of Africa 



food, and not an ounce of the meat was wasted. Without protection it is 

 not likely that hippopotami will long survive in any of the small rivers 

 intersecting the countries between the Zambesi and the Limpopo which 

 are now being colonised by Europeans, as the average European is quite as 

 destructively inclined as the African savage, and a good deal more skilful 

 in the use of a rifle ; but these animals will probably survive for a long 

 time to come in the rivers which flow into the Indian Ocean, between 

 St. Lucia Bay and the Zambesi, as well as along. the whole course of that 

 river itself, and its chief tributaries, such as the Shire, Loangwa, Kafukwe, 

 Chobi, and many lesser streams ; such is my opinion, and if I am right in 

 this conjecture that the hippopotamus is likely to hold its own for a long 

 time to come on the Zambesi and its tributaries, it can only be in the dim 

 and distant future that this supremely ugly, yet most interesting survival 

 from pleistocene times will be finally banished from all the fever-stricken 

 swamps and rivers of so vast a territory as Equatorial Africa, and when that 

 day comes this will be but a poor world for a lover of nature to live in. 



F. C. Selous. 



Distribution of Hippopotamus in East and North Africa 



North of the Zambesi there are no rivers of any size in which the 

 hippopotamus does not exist. In the Zambesi itself they are abundant, 

 though not so numerous as formerly in the lower part, owing partly to 

 shooting, and also to the increased traffic. In the Shire River they at one 

 time constituted a source of danger, Sir H. H. Johnston remarking that 

 they were very vicious, and fond of pursuing and upsetting canoes, so that 

 their destruction then up to a certain point was rather encouraged than 

 otherwise. Indeed, few travellers who have done much canoe-work where 

 these animals abound have escaped their warlike demonstrations, some- 

 times from an old bull, at others from a cow whose maternal fears for 



