664 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Nov. 23, 1912 
After a month's hard hunting I at last had 
the luck of a pygmy hippo. I was drifting down 
the river in my canoe late one afternoon, when 
I saw the animal trying to climb up the steep 
bank of the river. Before it had noticed us we 
were within ten yards. I stood with my gun 
ready to shoot, but with a great effort I curbed 
my hunting passion. Carl Hagenbeck’s last word 
had been. “Now, remember, we must have our 
animals alive. Do not shoot before you are sure 
to be able to catch one.” Not five yards from 
the canoe the little brute dropped back into the 
water and disappeared. 
Shortly after that I returned to the coast 
and fitted out anew to penetrate into the Golah 
country. Two months I hunted there without 
any success. In the rains it was practically im¬ 
possible to find any tracks, but in spite of every¬ 
thing I managed to find about thirty promising 
places in which to dig my pits. At first I had 
the intention to try netting the animals, but the 
uncertainty of their movements, and the thick 
undergrowth of the dense Liberian forests made 
net-hunting impracticable. 
One day a hippo fell into one of the pits. 
It had rained for thirty-six hours, and before 
my scouts reached the place it escaped unharmed. 
For the first time in my life I knew myself 
beaten. Practically all my carriers were sick; 
the whole country was under water and the 
native trails were recognizable only because in 
them the water raced down like mountain tor¬ 
rents. 
I returned to the coast and cabled to my 
people that the only chances for success were 
in the short dry season from January to May. 
The net result of this expensive expedition was 
that I had absolute proof of the existence of the 
dwarf hippo. 
But what Hagenbeck undertakes he carries 
through against all odds, and without considera¬ 
tion of financial sacrifices. He had not lost faith 
in me, and in December, 1911, I started out on 
my second expedition. This time I was known 
in Liberia, and had but small difficulties in rais¬ 
ing a caravan of fifty good men. 
I had seen on the last trip that nothing could 
be done near the coast, though the beasts exist 
even within a day of the coast, but there it is 
hunted too much by the natives and is conse¬ 
quently too rare and shy. 
The confluences of the upper Lofa River 
were this time my goal. Here, in the practically 
unknown Gorze territory of the powerful and 
war-like Golah tribe, near the big Sue Bush, 
where there is no human habitation for days 
and days, I could reckon on success. 
But again I encountered an unforeseen ob¬ 
stacle. The Pesse tribe had declared war, and 
was fighting the Government and its allies. 
Yangaia, a big fortified Golah town. I reached 
without any considerable trouble, but when I 
called my carriers the next morning to start, they 
rebelled, one and all. The previous day we had 
had a sharp march of twenty-five miles through 
thick bush. Instead of taking their loads, the 
whole crowd came down to my tent, which I had 
pitched outside the village, and refused to go 
on. They said: “We are tired to-day, and there 
is war ahead. To-day we will not move, for to¬ 
morrow we hold word.” 
This was all T could get out of them The 
whole success of the expedition was in the bal¬ 
ance. Had I made them the slightest concession 
everything would have been lost. Once more I 
told them to take their loads, but only a threat¬ 
ening murmur was the answer. Then I saw red. 
open rebellion. I slipped the Browning in my 
pocket, took my hunting crop and went anion" 
them. Clash, crack went the whin on the naked 
body. A few straight hits from the shoulder on 
the jaws of those who did not move and quicker 
than I can tell it I drove the mutinous crowd 
before me like a herd of sheep. The result of 
the rebellion for the hoys was that I stopped 
their rations for three days, and their allowance 
of gin for a month. 
The same day I reached Taquenia. the forti¬ 
fied town of the paramount chief of the Golah. 
Tawe Dadwe. T had reckoned greatly on the 
assistance of this omnipotent native king, but to 
my great sorrow he declared openly that he could 
not help me, because the war pressed him too 
hard. He even expected an attack from the 
Pesse daily. Against my usual custom I had to 
submit to the entreaties of the chief, and pitch 
my tent in the middle of the town. 
During my stay at Taquema the scouts of 
the enemy approached the town, but hearing that 
a white man with a big caravan and guns had 
arrived, they thought discretion the better part 
of valor. Here I had an opportunity to study 
the most secret sacrificial rites of this unknown 
tribe. 
The Lofa River, one of the biggest rivers in 
Liberia, flows within an hour of Taquema. For 
two months I hunted on the small tributaries of 
this river, the course of which will appear en¬ 
tirely different from what it has been thought, 
when my map of the hinterland of Liberia is 
finished. 
In spite of the greatest endeavors and the 
hardest work which I have done during my long 
hunting career in Africa I did not even manage 
to shoot one of these shy and secretive animals, 
in order that I might send home positive proof 
of its existence. 
The greatest difficulty in hunting the Liber¬ 
ian hippopotamus is that unlike their big cousins 
they do not frequent the rivers. They make 
their home deep in the inhospitable forest, in the 
dense vegetation, on the banks of the small 
forest streams, but not satisfied with the protec¬ 
tion the forest affords them, they enlarge the 
hollows which the water has washed out under 
the banks; and in these tunnels, where they are 
invisible from the bank, they sleep during the 
heat of the day. 
Day after day I patrolled the streams, con¬ 
tinually in water up to my hips, frequently to 
my shoulders. At last, as I was nearly despair¬ 
ing, on the 27th of February, Diana, the goddess 
of the hunters, smiled on me, and the first 
Liberian hippopotamus fell a victim to my gun. 
It was a nearly full grown cow. I was follow¬ 
ing the spoor of a small herd of the newly-by-me 
discovered dwarf elephant, when a fresh track 
of a mwe (Golah name for the pygmy hippo) 
made me leave the elephants. I followed this 
spoor down to a small streamlet with hardly two 
inches of “water, where it led into one of the 
above mentioned holes. I sent my boy round, 
and when he started poking into the hole with a 
stick, a responsive grunt followed, and not two 
yards from me the head of the much coveted 
animal appeared. I still carried my elephant gun. 
As my shot rang through the forest, one of the 
rarest animals of the African fauna lay before me. 
My camp was far away in the bush, and to 
my great regret I had to abandon the skeleton. 
It was only with the greatest difficulty that I 
managed to skin the animal and have the skin 
brought by my two hunters to the tent. 
In spite of all difficulties, however, I had not 
given up the idea of catching a hippo alive. 
Wherever I found a likely place I had a pit dug. 
It is easy to catch the great East African hippo, 
which keeps continually in the same water and 
uses the same tracks. With the pygmy hippo it 
is very hard to even find a place where there is 
the slightest chance of catching one, because this 
brute roams through the forest like an elephant 
or a nig. mostly goes singly, though sometimes 
in pairs, and rarely uses the same track twice. 
Meanwhile over a hundred pits had been 
made by my men, all carefully dug seven feet 
deep and covered so that not the sharpest eye 
could detect any sign of danger. 
At last, two days after I shot my first ani¬ 
mal, and when T was still working on its thick 
skin, a boy rushed to my tent breathlessly shout¬ 
ing from afar: “Massa! Massa! Deni mwe done 
catch!” 
On Nea Tindoa, an inhabited island in the 
Lofa River, a big bull had fallen into one of 
my pits. My sergeant, Momoro, started at once 
with a few boys to reach the place the same 
night and keep guard to prevent the meat-hungry 
native from killing the hippo. 
At last I had succeeded against the prophe¬ 
cies of Euroneans, Liberians and natives. And 
(Continued on page 674.) 
If you want your shoot to he announced 
here, send a notice like the following: 
Fixtures. 
REGISTERED TOURNAMENTS. 
Dec. 2-6. — St. Thomas (Ont.) G. C. W. J. McCance, 
Asst. Mgr. 
1913. 
Jan. 1.—Utica, N. Y.—Genesee Gun Club. E. J. Lough- 
lin, Sec’y. 
Jan. 22-25.—Pinehurst (N. C.) Country Club. Leonard 
Tufts, Pres. 
July 8-13.—Cedar Point, Ohio.—The Indians’ tournament. 
D. Hj Eaton, Sec’y, Cincinnati, O. 
DRIVERS AND TWISTERS. 
“A” cup game down du Pont way seems to be a 
round of roodles, with the buck sojourning at present in 
front of Eugene du Pont, with Ed. Banks dealing. 
* 
Oh! ye Bulgars! here are turkeys ready for the 
slaughter at the Du Pont Gun Club Thanksgiving Day 
shoot at Wilmington, Del. There will be five classes, 
four turkeys to a class. The shoot will be open to all. 
* 
No matter where you commute from, there will be a 
shoot close by on Thanksgiving Day. If you do not 
know of one near the place your ticket is punched to, 
drop me a card. I think I can satisfy your Missouri 
curiosity. 
I? 
T. E. Doremus has been appointed manager of the 
Sporting Powder Division of E. I. du Pont de Nemours 
Powder Company, to succeed J. T. Skelly, who has gone 
with one of the new companies organized under the 
ruling of the court. 
Buckwalter and Trumbauer want you to help them 
pull a live-bird shoot at Royersford, Pa., on Dec. 18. 
Jack Rabbit system. Every bird you kill nets you $1.50 
— every miss credits the jack-pot $1.50, to be divided 50, 
30 and 20 per cent. There will be much else doing this 
date, same place. Send to Buckwalter and Trumbauer, 
Royersford, Pa., for particulars. 
W. G. Beecroft. 
Columbus Gun Club. 
Scores made at Columbus Gun Club and at the 
Indian Lake shoot follow. The wind blew a gale at 
both shoots, hence such poor scores. The next shoot to 
be held at the Columbus Gun Club will be on Dec. 18 
on the Lewis system. The Columbus Gun Club is ask¬ 
ing for the Grand American plandicap for 1913: 
Columbus sc-res: 
Shot at. 
T.roke. 
Shot at. Broke. 
... 150 
103 
Eby . 
.150 
hi 
Hall . 
... 150 
112 
Shilling ... 
. 130 
131 
Moeller . 
... 150 
141 
Ward . 
. 150 
126 
Spangler .... 
... 150 
132 
Heikes .... 
. 150 
146 
Stout. 
... 150 
125 
McBee .... 
. 150 
125 
Squier . 
117 
Wood .... 
. 100 
S5 
Ford . 
127 
Cook . 
. 100 
77 
T H Smith... 
... 150 
111 
Holden ... 
. 100 
75 
Fisher . 
... 150 
133 
Toyce . 
. WO 
85 
Coffman . 
.... 150 
124 
Indian Lake Scores 
Taylor . 
. .. 150 
132 
Feidner ... 
.150 
9S 
Moeller . 
.... 150 
102 
1) Wagner 
.150 
111 
Zint . 
... 150 
99 
Fisher . 
. 150 
13.' 
Lambert . 
.... 150 
111 
Ward . 
. 150 
91 
Duckham .... 
.... 150 
112 
C Wagner 
. 150 
100 
Mason . 
... 150 
72 
Schindwolf 
.120 
77 
Houghton .. 
.... 150 
100 
Kotter .... 
. 90 
51 
Tilton . 
... 150 
78 
Lon Fisher. 
Forest and Stream may be ordered from any news¬ 
dealer. Ask your dealer to supply you regularly. 
