THE ATHI RIVER 
221 
In another forest-girt pool, overarched with broad- 
topped “ fever-trees,” Mabruki’s wondrous instinct de¬ 
tected a hippo where none save savage eye could surely 
have espied it. A big leafy tree had fallen half across 
the river, and it was beneath the sunken boughs of this, 
all laden with drift grass and wrack, that the hippo 
at intervals showed up to breathe. Nothing even then 
was visible save only the snout and elevated cranium, 
and these concealed amidst leafage and drift. By 
creeping forward while the hippo was under, I reached 
a fallen tree within fifteen yards. Presently that weird 
apparition emerged, silent and ghost-like amid the 
shadows. I placed a ‘450-solid fair on the cranium— 
somewhere : for a resounding crash ensued, yet no water 
flew up nor was there a ripple to be seen. 
Note that the impact of a ball from these powerful 
rifles on water will throw up a solid column twenty feet 
in height and stun all the fish for yards around. There 
is therefore no mistaking a miss. 
Yet we never saw that hippo again. So absolutely 
certain did I feel that he must be dead, that when we 
did not find him floating next morning, thinking he 
must be held down by the fallen tree, we returned a 
third time in the afternoon with axes, ropes, etc., and 
cut the trunk loose. But nothing appeared. The luck 
of Elmenteita was repeated. I was fated not to get a 
hippo : yet the undertaking presents not a tithe the 
difficulty of others in which we succeeded. 
The presence- of so many ichthyophagous birds and 
reptiles clearly bespoke fish, and our men caught 
numbers of a small dace-like species, pale green above, 
silvery below, which took a bait greedily, and were 
jerked ashore. Though almost tasteless, fish were 
welcome enough as a change in our veld fare. We also 
saw other fish, much larger—apparently several pounds 
in weight—in the deep pools of the Athi. 
The early mornings at this season (January) were cold, 
still and foggy, with heavy dew. At nine o’clock a 
breeze set in from the north, increasing during the day 
