382 
A JOURNEY UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 
Natives and porters who came into Naivasha with other par¬ 
ties, declared they had seen many indications that lions in that 
vicinity were more plentiful than for years past, and that they were 
growing fiercely bold, almost entering several of the camps in their 
efforts to drag down a victim. 
Colonel Roosevelt had had many narrow calls since he began 
hunting in Africa, but the experience he went through the day 
previous to breaking camp on the border of Lake Naivasha was one 
of the most thrilling incidents in that his life was constantly in 
danger. That he is alive to-day is due to his coolness and 
wonderful marksmanship. 
ROOSEVELT BATTLES WITH TWELVE HIPPOPOTAMI. 
At nine o’clock in the morning Colonel Roosevelt, accompanied 
only by two negro porters to row his small boat, started out on Lake 
Naivasha to seek a calf hippopotamus which he was lacking for 
his collection for the Smithsonian Institute. The ex-President, in 
his skiff, had reached an isolated part of the lake far away from 
his camp, when a school of twelve hippos surrounded his craft, 
threatening with every movement to upset it and spill the ex- 
President and his rowers into the lake, where they would have met 
instant death, for the hippos were attacking the small boat with 
savage frenzy. 
Several literally hurled themselves against the sides of the little 
rowboat, while two or three dived deep into the waters of the lake 
and came up under the boat, striking it with their backs in an 
attempt to overturn it and throw its occupants into the water. 
The native boatmen were in a terrible panic and their own 
actions, added to the impact of the bodies of the attacking hippos 
threatened at every moment to overturn the small boat. Shouting 
to his rowers to sit still, a warning which they were too frightened 
to heed. Colonel Roosevelt seized his heavy express rifle and 
selected a magnificent cow hippo which seemed to be the leader of 
the attacking school. This hippo he killed with one shot and with 
the next shot he killed a magnificent bull hippo, the finest killed m 
the vicinity in years. 
