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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photo by Kermit Roosevelt. Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons 

 SKINNING THE HIPPO 



•dant life. South of the desert region 

 lies Africa proper — the Africa of zoolo- 

 gists, the recently unknown Africa, the 

 Africa that has become open to white 

 explorers, merchants, missionaries, and 

 scientists only within the last half cen- 

 tury. Our expedition landed on the east 

 coast of Africa a little south of the equa- 

 tor, went right across the belt of fever- 

 haunted lowland, the fever-haunted 

 coast region, on to the high, broad, 

 healthful uplands of equatorial East 

 Africa, crossed it, went to the great cen- 

 tral lakes of Africa, the great Nyanza 

 lakes — Victoria Nyanza and Albert Ny- 

 anza — and then went down the Nile, 

 traveling from south almost due north, 

 and came out at Khartum, in the Sudan. 



There were no real hardships con- 

 nected with the trip. There is, of course, 

 a mild amount of danger in chasing the 

 wild beasts, and there is a good deal 



more danger from disease ; but we were 

 fortunate enough not to lose a single 

 white man on the expedition. We had 

 casualties to two of our native attend- 

 ants from wild beasts. One man was 

 mauled by a leopard and one man was 

 tossed by a rhino. A very few died 

 from dysentery and fever, because it is 

 almost impossible to make them take 

 care of themselves. For instance, we 

 could always get the white men to boil 

 their water before drinking, but we could 

 not make our porters do this. They 

 looked upon it as a superstition upon 

 our part — as one of the queer vagaries 

 of the white people, the strangers from 

 over the seas, which had no foundation 

 in reason. Personally, I grew to be really 

 very much attached to our attendants. 

 They were like great big children. They 

 live a perfectly grasshopper life, with no 

 capacity to think of the future. For 



