THE HIPPOPOTAMUS 85 



mischief, and where his conduct showed every 

 symptom of anger and ferocity ; but my view of 

 such cases, or many of them, is that they have 

 been perpetrated by some unfortunate beast 

 which in the past, as the result of gunshot wounds 

 or other provocation, has conceived a strong dis- 

 taste for humanity as a whole, memories of his 

 wrongs prompting him to wreak vengeance upon 

 his tormentors in the same way that an elephant 

 will under similar stimulus. I fancy that the 

 responsibility for a great many of these acts of 

 aggression which are laid to the charge of the 

 hippopotamus shoiild of right be laid upon the 

 persons who have futilely wounded them in the 

 past, and caused them pain and torture for which 

 it is hardly unnatural that they should seek a day 

 of reckoning. 



Natives of South, Central, and East Africa as 

 a whole hunt the hippopotamus for his hide, his 

 fat, and his meat. The hide of a well-grown 

 bull is often nearly 2 inches thick, and makes all 

 sorts of useful and attractive articles, from riding- 

 whips to card-trays. It is at the same time used 

 all over Africa as an instrument of torture — the 

 " Sjambok " of the Boer, the " Chikote " of the 

 Portuguese, and the " Kliurbash " of North 

 Africa being one and the same thing, with sUght 

 variations. In other words, it is an appalling 

 and merciless whip about 5 feet long, tapering 

 from the thickness of one's thumb to that of an 

 ordinary pencil, and, as I have sometimes seen it 

 far from the ken of the Indigenes Protection 

 Society, terminating in a piece of thin steel wire. 

 7 



