744 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



Alice' to show lighter heels in retreat than even the savages of Nakicliuio 

 had shown to us. These hippopotami would afford rare sport in a boat spe- 

 cially built for killing them ; then they might splinter her sides with their 

 tusks, and bellow and kick to their utmost ; but the ' Lady Alice,' if I can 

 help it, with her delicate skin of cedar and ribs of slender hickory, shall 

 never come in close contact with the iron-hard ivory of the rude hippopo- 

 tamus ; for she would be splintered into matches, and crushed up like an egg 

 before one could say a word, and then the hungry crocodiles would leisurely 

 digest us. The explorer's task, to my mind, is a far nobler one than hunting 

 sea-horses ; and our gallant cedar boat has many a thousand miles to travel 

 yet before she has performed her task. The still unknown expanse of the 

 Victoria Nyanza, northward and westward, and again south-westward, still 

 invited us and her to view its delights and wonders of Nature. The stormy 

 Lake Albert, and the stormier Tanganyika, though yet distant, woo us to 

 ride on their waves ; and far Bangweolo, Moero, and Kamolondo, with the 

 Lincoln Lakes, promise us fair prospects, and as rich rewards, if we can only 

 bide the buffets of the tempests, the fevers of the swamp and forest, and the 

 brunt of savage hostility and ignorance till then. Shall we forego the van- 

 tage of all this rich harvest and acquisition of knowledge for an hour's fierce 

 pleasure with the ugly but formidable hippopotamus ? Not by my election 

 or consent. Let the admirers of ' sport at any price ' call it faint-heartedness, 

 or even a harsher name, if they will — I call it prudence. Yet I have for them 

 an adventure with a river-horse — a cowardly, dull-witted, fat-brained hippo. 

 I can abuse him savagely in your columns — for his brothers in Europe, 

 thank Fortune, do not read ' The Telegraph ' or the ■ Herald ' — without fear 

 of a civil or criminal suit for libel. I say I have a story of one to tell some 

 day, when I have no higher things to write of, which will warm all your 

 young bloods ; and I have had another interview with a lion, or I might put 

 it, a herd of lions, just as exciting. * But these must remain untold, until I 

 camp under the palms of Ujiji again, with half my work done, and my other 

 half still beckoning me forward. Let us pass on, therefore, to our subject, 

 and the place where I left off — namely, cowardlike running away from a 

 pair of bull hippos. I am not certain they were bulls either, though they 

 were big ones, sure enough. 



" We flew away with a bellying sail along the coast of Mahata, where 

 we saw such a dense population, and clusters of large villages, as we had not 

 beheld elsewhere. We thought we would make one more effort to learn of 

 the natives the names of some of these villages, and for that purpose steered 

 for a cove on the western shore of Mahata. We anchored within fifty yards 

 of the shore, and so paid out our cable that but a few feet of deep water sepa- 

 rated us from the beach. Some half-a-dozen men, wearing small land-shells 

 above their elbows, and a circle of them round their heads, came to the brink. 



