6 
WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WA YS 
CHAP. 
On the day following they went in search, and 
discovered the animal lying upon a sandbank in 
a shallow portion of the river. Considering that 
it was helpless, they descended the bank, and 
approached it with their spears, but it immediately 
rushed upon the foremost man, and bit him into 
halves by seizing him at the waist. 
I was visited by a sheik of the Shillook tribe 
when camped at a station upon the White Nile ; 
this old man was blind, and he was paddled across 
the broad river by his son in a canoe formed of the 
stems of an exceedingly light wood known as 
ambatch. Upon the return journey, just as he 
had left me to recross the river, a bull hippo¬ 
potamus ascended from the bottom, seized the frail 
canoe, together with the blind sheik, in his jaws, 
and reduced the little vessel to a hundred frag¬ 
ments, killing the old man at the same moment. 
I was standing upon the bank, and witnessed the 
splash of the attack and the utter wreck of the 
canoe, while the sheik’s son swam in consternation 
to the shore. 
The skin of a bull hippopotamus is from if 
to 2 inches thick. The entire hide when fresh would 
weigh about 5 cwts. Although I never actually 
weighed a skin, I once skinned a big bull with 
the intention of preserving it, and when, after great 
exertion, we succeeded in loading a powerful camel, 
it could hardly carry the weight. The usual desert 
load for a good camel is 500 lbs., therefore I 
concluded that the skin which caused a difficulty 
