THE HIPPOPOTAMUS 
having plenty of sea room, keep their distance, and, if they have been much 
molested, only raise their heads above the water to breathe for such a very 
short time that not only great accuracy of aim is necessary to hit one in 
the brain, but great quickness in firing as well. There is always the chance, 
too, that if a savage animal is wounded, it may attack the boat. Only a 
few months ago I heard that a sportsman lost his life in this way in East 
Africa, having been drowned after his boat was capsized by a wounded 
hippo. In certain localities hippos are very much more aggressive than in 
others, and the natives are often very much afraid of them. Old bulls and 
cows with newly born calves are the most dangerous. Opening their huge 
jaws to their fullest extent, they will tear a great rent in the side of a canoe 
or small boat, and at once sink it, and sometimes they will attack its 
occupants as they are swimming away or struggling in the water. A canoe 
of my own was once capsized in the Upper Zambesi by a hippo cow with a 
very young calf. In this instance the angry animal first came up under the 
canoe, and then, laying her great head over it, just pressed it down and 
sank it in fourteen feet of water. I afterwards watched this hippo for a 
long time and tried to shoot it, but without success. For more than an 
hour I took the times that it stopped under water. The longest time was 
4 minutes 20 seconds, and the shortest 40 seconds, the average being 
from 2 minutes to 2 minutes 30 seconds. After having been fired at, this 
animal always remained more than four minutes under water, and as in 
such cases it could scarcely have had time to take a full breath, it is con- 
ceivable that had it been able to fill its lungs with air before going down 
it might have remained below the surface for some time longer. 
Hippos are much more active on land than their huge bodies and very 
short legs would lead one to suppose. If, after having been much shot at 
in one pool, they make up their minds to leave it in the daytime and seek a 
safer retreat, they will cover the intervening ground at a gallop. I have 
known them, too, after having been disturbed in some comparatively 
small pool, in such rivers as the Umfuli and Umniati in Northern 
Mashonaland, to travel overland at least twenty miles during the following 
night in order to reach a larger sheet of water. 
Without being disturbed at all, they are accustomed to wander at night 
in search of grass far from the rivers and lakes in which they spend the 
day. This is especially the case in the rainy season. In travelling from one 
pool to another, should these be separated by a big bend in a river, hippos 
make a bee-line across country. These hippo paths have been in use for 
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