The Pig and Hippopotamus 



325 



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II It PO POT \ MI'- 



The fekin of tlie hippopotamus is often as much as an inch and a half in thickness on the upper parts of the body. 



killed, as all round the pool festoons of meat were hanging on poles to dry, and a large 

 number of natives had been living for some time on nothing but hippopotamus-meat. 

 Altogether I imagine that a herd of at least twenty animals ■ must have been destroyed. 

 Much as one must regret such a wholesale slaughter, it must be remembered that this great 

 killing was the work of hungry savages, who at any rate utilised every scrap of the meat 

 thus obtained, and much of the skin as well, for food ; and such an incident is far less 

 reprehensible — indeed, stands on quite a different plane as regards moral guilt — to the wanton 

 destruction of a large number of hippojiotamuses in the L'mzingwani Eiver, near Bulawayo, 

 within a few months of the conquest of Matabililand Ijy the Chartered Company's forces in 

 1893. These animals had been protected for many years by Lo Bengula and his father 

 Umziligazi before him ; but no sooner were the Matabili conquered and their country thrown 

 open to white men than certain unscrupulous persons destroyed all but a very few of these 

 half-tame animals, for the sake of the few paltry pieces of money their hides were worth ! 



Gradually, as the world grows older, more civilised, and, to my thinking, less and less 

 interesting, the range of the hippopotamus, like that of all other large animals, must become 

 more and more circumscribed ; l]ut now that all Africa has been parcelled out amongst the 

 white races of Western Europe, if the indiscriminate killing of hippoj^otamuses by either white 

 men or natives can be controlled, and the constant and cruel custom of firing at the heads of 

 these animals from the decks of river-steamers all over Africa be put a stop to, I believe that 

 this most interesting mammal, owing to the nature of its habitat, and the \'ast extent of the 

 rivers, swamps, and lakes in which it still exists in consideralile numbers, will long outlive 

 all other piachydermatous animals. Hideous, uncouth, and unnecessary as the hippopotamus 



