326 WHITE HIPPOPOTAMUS. Chap. XVI. 



and monkeys appear ; francolins, guinea-fowls, and myriads 

 of turtledoves attract the eye in the covers, with the fresh 

 spoor of elephants and rhinoceroses, which had been at the 

 river during the night. Every few miles we came upon a 

 school of hippopotami, asleep on some shallow sandbank ; 

 their bodies, nearly all out of the water, appeared like 

 masses of black rock in the river. When these animals 

 are hunted much, they become proportion ably wary, but 

 here no hunter ever troubles them, and they repose in 

 security, always however taking the precaution of sleeping 

 just above the deep channel, into which they can plunge 

 when alarmed. When a shot is fired into a sleeping herd, 

 all start up on their feet, and stare with peculiar stolid looks 

 of hippopotamic surprise, and w r ait for another shot before 

 dashing into deep w T ater. A few miles below Chikumbula's 

 we saw a white hippopotamus in a herd. Our men had never 

 seen one like it before. It was of a pinkish white, exactly 

 like the colour of the Albino. It seemed to be the father of 

 a number of others, for there were many marked with large 

 light patches. The so-called white elephant, is just such a 

 pinkish Albino as this hippopotamus. A few miles above 

 Kariba, we observed that, in two small hamlets, many of the 

 inhabitants had a similar affection of the skin. The same 

 influence appeared to have affected man and beast. A dark 

 coloured hippopotamus stood alone, as if expelled from 

 the herd, and bit the water, shaking his head from side to 

 side in a most frantic manner. This biting the water with 

 his huge jaws is the hippopotamus' way of " slamming 

 the door." When the female has twins, she is said to kill 

 one of them. 



We touched at the beautiful tree-covered island of Kalabi, 

 opposite where Tuba-mokoro lectured the lion in our way up. 

 The ancestors of the people who now inhabit this island pos- 



