12 
African Game Trails 
such smashing blow as the heavy bullets of 
the Holland. Moreover, when they struck 
the heavy bones they tended to break into 
fragments, while the big Holland bullets 
ploughed through. The Winchester and the 
Springfield were the weapons one of which 
I always carried in my own hand, and 
for any ordinary game I much preferred 
them to any other rifles. The Winchester 
did admirably with lions, giraffes, elands, 
and smaller game, and, as will be seen, with 
hippos. For heavy game like rhinoceroses 
and buffaloes, I found that for me personally 
the heavy Holland was unquestionably the 
proper weapon. But in writing this I wish 
most distinctly to assert my full knowledge 
of the fact that the choice of a rifle is almost 
as much a matter of personal idiosyncrasy 
as the choice of a friend. The above must 
be taken as merely the expression of my per¬ 
sonal preferences. It will doubtless arouse 
as much objection among the ultra cham¬ 
pions of one type of gun as among the ultra¬ 
champions of another. The truth is that 
any good modern rifle is good enough. 
The determining factor is the man behind 
the gun. 
In the afternoon of the day on which we 
killed the rhino Judd took me out again to 
try for hippos, this time in the Rewero, 
which ran close by the house. We rode up¬ 
stream a couple of miles; I missed a wart- 
hog on the way. Then we sent back our 
horses and walked down the river bank 
as quietly as possible, Judd scanning the 
pools, and the eddies in the running stream, 
from every point of vantage. Once we 
aroused a crocodile, which plunged into the 
water. The stream was full of fish, some 
of considerable size; and in the meadow 
land on our side we saw a gang of big, black 
wild-geese feeding. But we got within half 
a mile of McMillan’s house without seeing 
a hippo, and the light was rapidly fading. 
Judd announced that we would go home, 
but took one last look around the next 
bend, and instantly sank to his knees, 
beckoning to me. I crept forward on all- 
fours, and he pointed out to me an object in 
the stream, fifty yards off, under the over¬ 
hanging branch of a tree, which jutted out 
from the steep bank opposite. In that 
light I should not myself have recognized it 
as a hippo head; but it was one, looking 
toward us, with the ears up and the nostrils, 
eyes, and forehead above water. I aimed 
for the centre; the sound told that the bul¬ 
let had struck somewhere on the head, and 
the animal disappeared without a splash. 
Judd was sure I had killed, but I was by no 
means so confident myself, and there was 
no way of telling until next morning, for the 
hippo always sinks when shot and does not 
rise to the surface for several hours. Ac¬ 
cordingly, back we walked to the house. 
At sunrise next morning Cuninghame, 
Judd, and I, with a crowd of porters, were 
down at the spot. There was a very leaky 
boat in which Cuninghame, Judd, and I 
embarked, intending to drift and paddle 
downstream while the porters walked along 
the bank. We did not have far to go, for 
as we rounded the first point we heard the 
porters break into guttural exclamations of 
delight, and there ahead of us, by a little 
island of papyrus, was the dead hippo. 
With the help of the boat it was towed to, 
a convenient landing-place, and then the 
porters dragged it ashore. It was a cow, of 
good size for one dwelling in a small river, 
where they never approach the dimensions 
of those making their homes in a great lake 
like the Victoria Nyanza. This one weighed 
nearly two thousand eight hundred pounds, 
and I could well believe that a big lake bull 
would weigh between three and four tons. 
In wild regions hippos rest on sandy 
bars, and even come ashore to feed, by day; 
but wherever there are inhabitants they 
land to feed only at night. Those in the Re¬ 
wero continually entered McMillan’s gar¬ 
den . Where they are num erous they some¬ 
times attack small boats and kill the people 
in them; and where they are so plentiful 
they do great damage to the plantations of 
the natives, so much so that they then have to 
be taken off the list of preserved game and 
their destruction encouraged. Their enor¬ 
mous jaws sweep in quantities of plants, or 
lush grass, or corn or vegetables, at a mouth¬ 
ful, while their appetite is as gigantic as their 
body. In spite of their short legs, they go at 
a good gait on shore, but the water is their 
real home, and they always seek it when 
alarmed. They dive and float wonderfully, 
rising to the surface or sinking to the bottom 
at will, and they gallop at speed along the 
bottoms of lakes or rivers, with their bodies 
wholly submerged; but as is natural enough, 
in view of their big bodies and short legs, 
they are not fast swimmers for any length 
of time. They make curious and unmistak- 
