THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



725 



to stretch out its body, so that the abdomen nearly reaches the ground, the Javanese 

 fix large scythe-like knives into the rock, which they cover with moss and herbage, 

 thus forcing the poor rhinoceros to commit an involuntary suicide, and teaching him, 

 though too late to profit by his experience, how difficult it is to escape the cunning of 

 man, even on the mountain peak. 



** Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee ; he eateth grass as an ox ; his 

 bones are as strong pieces of brass ; his bones are like bars of iron ; he lieth under 

 the shady trees in the covert of the reed and fens. The shady trees cover him with 

 their shadow ; the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold he driaketh up 

 a river ; he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth." Thus, ia the book 

 of Job, we find the Hippopotamus portrayed with few words but incomparable power. 

 How tame after this noble picture must any lengthened description appear ! * 



According to the inspired poet, the hippopotamus seems anciently to have inhabited 

 the waters of the Jordan, but now it is nowhere to be found in Asia ; and even in 

 Africa the limits of its domain are perpetually contracting before the persecutions of 

 man. It has entirely disappeared from Egypt and the rivers of the Cape Colony, 

 where Le Vaillant found it in numbers during the last century. In many respects a 

 valuable prize ; of easy destruction, in spite, or rather on account of its size, which 

 betrays it to the attacks of its enemies ; a dangerous neighbor to plantations, it is con- 

 demned to retreat before the waves of advancing civilization, and would long since 

 have been extirpated in all Africa, if the lakes and rivers of the interior of that vast 

 den of barbarism were as busily plowed over as ours by boats and ships, or their 

 banks as thickly strewn with towns and villages. 



For the hippopotamus is not able, like so many other beasts of the wilderness, to 

 hide itself in the gloom of impenetrable forests, or to plunge into the sandy dasert, 

 traversed by the Bedouin on his dromedary; it requires the neighborhood of the 

 stream, the empire of which it divides with its amphibious neighbor the crocodile. 

 Occasionally during the day it is to be seen basking on the shore amid ooze and mud, 

 but throughout the night the unwieldy monster may be heard snorting and blowing 

 during its aquatic gambols ; it then sallies forth from its reed grown coverts to graze 

 by the light of the moon, never, however, venturing to any distance from the river, 

 the stronghold to which it betakes itself on the smallest alarm. 



In point of ugliness the hippopotamus, or river-horse, as it has also very inappropri- 

 ately been named, might compete with the rhinoceros itself. Its shapeless carcass 

 rests upon short and disproportioned legs, and, with its vast belly almost trailing upon 

 the ground, it may not inaptly be likened to an overgrown "prize-pig." Its immensely 

 large head has each jaw armed with two formidable tusks, those in the lower, which 

 are always the largest, attaining at times two feet in length ; and the inside of the 

 mouth is said to resemble a mass of butcher's meat. The eyes, which are placed in 

 prominences like the garret windows of a Dutch house, the nostrils, and ears, are all 

 on the same plane, on the upper level of the head, so that the unwieldy monster, 



* It should be noted, however, that it is not altogether certain that the Hippopotamus is 

 really the Behernoth of Job. Dr. Thomson, than whom there can hardly be better authority, 

 in his admirable work " The Land and the Book," argues plausibly that Behemoth is the 

 Syrian Buffalo. 



