332 THUNDERSTORMS — HIPPOPOTAMI. Chap. XVI, 



having fallen 7°, or to 78°. There were thunderstorms' all 

 around us during the day, and the Zambesi rose several 

 inches, and became highly discoloured. 



The hippopotami are more wary here than higher up, as 

 the natives hunt them with guns. Having shot one on a 

 shallow sandbank, our men undertook to bring it over to the 

 left bank, in order to cut it up with greater ease. It was a 

 fine fat one, and all rejoiced in the hope of eating the fat for 

 butter, with our hard dry cakes of native meal. Our cook 

 was sent over to cut a choice piece for dinner, but returned 

 Avith the astonishing intelligence that the carcass was gone. 

 They had been hoodwinked, and were very much ashamed ol 

 themselves. A number of Banyai came to assist in rolling 

 it ashore, and asserted that it was all shallow water. They 

 rolled it over and over towards the land, and, finding the rope 

 Ave had made fast to it, as they said, an encumbrance, it was 

 unloosed. All Avere shouting and talking as loud as they 

 could baAvl, Avhen suddenly our expected feast plumped into a 

 deep hole, as the Banyai intended it should do. When sink- 

 ing, all the Makololo jumped in after it. One caught fran- 

 ticly at the tail ; another grasped a foot, a third seized the 

 hip ; " but, by Sebituane ! it Avould go down, in srjite of all 

 that Ave could do." Instead of a fat hippopotamus, Ave had 

 only a lean foAvl for dinner, and Avere glad enough to get 

 even that. The hippopotamus, however, floated during the 

 night, and was found about a mile below. The Banyai then 

 assembled on the bank, and disputed our right to the beast : 

 "It might have been shot by somebody else." Our men 

 took a little of it and then left it, rather than come into 

 collision Avith them. 



A fine waterbuck was shot in the Kakolole narrows, at Mount 

 Manyerere ; it dropped beside the creek where it was feeding ; 

 an enormous crocodile, that had been AA r atching it at the moment, 



