220 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
it is exceedingly difficult to say whether the animal seen 
is a bull or a cow. As the time allowed for a shot is very 
short, and any hesitation probably insures the animal’s 
escape, this means that two or three hippo may be killed, 
quite unavoidably, before the right specimen is secured. 
Still there may be interesting and exciting incidents in a 
hippo hunt. Cuninghame, the two Attenboroughs, and I 
started early in the launch, towing the big, clumsy row-boat, 
with as crew three of our porters who could row. We 
steamed down the lake some fifteen miles to a wide bay, 
indented by smaller bays, lagoons, and inlets, all fringed 
by a broad belt of impenetrable papyrus, while the beauti¬ 
ful purple lilies, with their leathery-tough stems and broad 
surface-floating leaves, filled the shallows. At the mouth 
of the main bay we passed a floating island, a mass of papy¬ 
rus perhaps a hundred and fifty acres in extent, which had 
been broken off from the shore somewhere, and was float¬ 
ing over the lake as the winds happened to drive it. 
In an opening in the dense papyrus masses we left the 
launch moored, and Cuninghame and I started in the row¬ 
boat to coast the green wall of tall, thick-growing, feather- 
topped reeds. Under the bright sunshine the shallow flats 
were alive with bird life. Gulls, both the gray-hooded and 
the black-backed, screamed harshly overhead. The chest- 
nut-colored lily trotters tripped daintily over the lily pads, 
and when they flew, held their long legs straight behind 
them, so that they looked as if they had tails like pheasants. 
Sacred ibis, white with naked black head and neck, stalked 
along the edge of the water, and on the bent papyrus small 
cormorants and herons perched. Everywhere there were 
coots and ducks, and crested grebes, big and little. Huge 
