THE PIG AND HIPPOPOTAMUS 287 
pleasantest thing to sit on in deep 
water with crocodiles about, especially 
in a wind, as it is very much like 
sitting on a floating barrel, and unless 
the balance is exactly maintained one 
is bound to roll off. 
Although it is often necessary 
for an African traveler to shoot one 
or more of them in order to obtain 
a supply of meat for his native 
followers, there is not much sport 
attached to the killing of these animals. 
The modern small-bore rifles, with 
their low trajectory and great pene- 
tration, render their destruction very 
easy when they are encountered in 
small lakes or narrow rivers, though 
in larger sheets of water, where they 
must be approached and shot from 
rickety canoes, it is by no means a 
simple matter to kill hippopotamuses, 
especially after they have grown shy 
and wary through persecution. As 
these animals are almost invariably 
killed by Europeans in the daytime, 
and are therefore encountered in the 
NO. II 
DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS 
This shows the process of filing one of the lower tusks 
water, they are usually shot through the brain as they raise their heads above the surface to 
breathe. By the natives hippopotamuses are killed in various ways. They are sometimes 
attacked first with harpoons, to which long lines are attached, with a float at the end to mark 
the position of the wounded animal, and then followed up in canoes and finally speared to 
NO. III 
DENTAL OPERATIONS ON A HIPPOPOTAMUS 
Sawing off one of the lower tusks 
death. Sometimes they are caught in huge 
pitfalls, or killed by the fall of a spear-head 
fixed in a heavy block of wood, which is re- 
leased from its position when a line, attached 
to the weight and then pegged across a 
hippopotamus’s path a few inches above the 
ground, is suddenly pulled by the feet of 
one of these animals striking against it. A 
fried of mine once had a horse killed under 
him by a similar trap set for buffaloes. His 
horse’s feet struck the line attached to the 
heavily weighted spear-head, and down it 
came, just missing his head and entering his 
horse’s back close behind the saddle. Where 
the natives have guns — mostly old muzzle- 
loading weapons of large bore — they often 
shoot hippopotamuses at close quarters when 
they are feeding at night. The most destruc- 
tive native method, however, of killing these 
monsters with which I am acquainted is one 
which used to be practised by the natives 
of Northern Mashonaland —namely, fencing in 
