202 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
a hippopotamus. Investigation promptly showed that 
these swamp-strongholds, though miles from the river, 
were crowded with the great amphibians. Therein, in 
fastnesses untrodden, protected by armoured jungle, and 
sheltered from the sun above by overarching papyrus, 
whole herds are wont to spend archaic lives—a custom 
that elsewhere throughout Africa has long become obsolete. 
The entrance to each lair was precisely indicated 
by the broken-down trails that led inwards; and that 
the owner was “at home” quickly proved by throwing 
in a clod—one beast I actually poked up with my stick. 
At one point, a big tunnel invited further exploration, 
and Baraka and I followed it into the prehistoric 
precincts. In the dim light within—never high enough 
to stand upright—we perceived a stagnant waterway, 
or series of pools, both sides of which were sculptured 
with the “beds” of hippopotami. These, being made 
when the mud was soft and plastic, resembled in size and 
shape the “cast ” of a dinghy. There was an asphyxiating 
odour—partly the exhalation of mephitic water; chiefly, 
I suspected, the personal aroma of generations of hippo¬ 
potami which during ages had dwelt herein without 
having learnt—-even though through adversity—the 
charm of daily ablutions. Save for the smell, I felt 
it was good to stand in that dim under-world. Those 
few minutes therein, we spent right outside the limits 
of the world we know; within the romance of the 
Pleistocene, when prehistoric monsters which neither 
knew nor feared man, possessed the planet. 
We found another hippo-colony, similar to this, on the 
shores of Lake No. Apparently these huge amphibians, 
provided they can discover some retreat absolutely secure 
from molestation, are prepared to adopt (or retain) more 
terrestrial habits than is their normal wont to-day. It 
is these inland hippos which resort to the river for a 
drink after dark—which explains a fact which at first 
had puzzled us (see p. 197). 
