212 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
it flew. Most plentiful of all were the coots, much resem¬ 
bling our common bald-pate coot, but with a pair of horns 
or papillae at the hinder end of the bare frontal space. 
There were a number of hippo in these lagoons. One 
afternoon after four o’clock I saw two standing half out of 
water in a shallow, eating the water-lilies. They seemed 
to spend the fore part of the day sleeping or resting in the 
papyrus or near its edge; toward evening they splashed 
and waded among the water-lilies, tearing them up with 
their huge jaws; and during the night they came ashore 
to feed on the grass and land plants. In consequence those 
killed during the day, until the late afternoon, had their 
stomachs filled, not with water plants, but with grasses 
which they must have obtained in their night journeys on 
dry land. At night I heard the bulls bellowing and roar¬ 
ing. They fight savagely among themselves, and where 
they are not molested, and the natives are timid, they 
not only do great damage to the gardens and crops, tram¬ 
pling them down and shovelling basketfuls into their huge 
mouths, but also become dangerous to human beings, at¬ 
tacking boats or canoes in a spirit of wanton and ferocious 
mischief. At this place, a few weeks before our arrival, a 
young bull, badly scarred, and evidently having been mis- 
handled by some bigger bull, came ashore in the daytime 
and actually attacked the cattle, and was promptly shot 
in consequence. They are astonishingly quick in their 
movements for such shapeless-looking, short-legged things. 
Of course they cannot swim in deep water with anything 
like the speed of the real swimming mammals, nor move 
on shore with the agility and speed of the true denizens of 
the land; nevertheless, by sheer muscular power and in 
