An Afrikander's Journal 
I.—Capturing a Hippo ecr\d Hvirvting Lions 
in RKodesia 
S OME four years ago I was shooting on 
the Kaftii River in Northwestern Rho¬ 
desia, a large stream about 220 miles 
north of Victoria Falls. In those days the rail¬ 
way had not been built further than Living¬ 
stone, but at the present time it is finished and 
a fine bridge built over the Kafui River, from 
where it runs to the northern copper mines, 
and thence north, to make a portion of the Cape 
to Cairo Road. 
The Northern Copper Company owns several 
good properties which are reported to be very 
rich, but I was never able to gain much in¬ 
formation concerning them from the miners. 
North again of these are the mines of the 
Tanganyika Concessions, adjoining the Congo 
border; this is a fine country, and a rich one, 
but it suffers from bad climatic conditions, but 
as civilization advances, malaria decreases. 
Why this is, I do not pretend to know, but it 
is so. 
On the Kafui swamps you find quantities of 
.that rather rare buck the Lechwe. Its head in 
some way resembles a water buck’s, but the 
horns are not so thick and massive, have more 
bow to them, and, I think, are more handsome. 
The Lechwe is only found on swampy ground, 
and I have seen them in any quantity only on 
the Kafir banks. There are also some pookoo, 
also rather scarce and very much like the 
Uganda kob. 
The sport on the whole was excellent. At 
that time the Masti Kalombi native was not 
too good, and was extremely independent, 
which is in itself a very bad sign, and I was 
warned to keep my eyes open, but having had 
a good deal of experience with natives of all 
kinds, I always do that, and here I took still 
further precautions. 
A year later it was found necessary to send 
up a force of Barotseland native police to pun¬ 
ish the natives by burning their crops and huts 
and fining the chiefs so many head of cattle, 
and so to make them more orderly. This ap¬ 
pears to be the only method of teaching an 
African native to behave. 
By JOHN A. M. LETHBRIDGE 
I very seldom take a companion with me on 
my expeditions—I find that it is far better to 
be alone. You have only yourself to consider, 
and if there are two of you, and differences of 
opinion arise, as they are bound to, however 
trivial they may be, they often seriously inter¬ 
fere with one’s comfort. 
I usually had with me a Matabele boy, and 
on this trip I had John, whom I had known in 
the South African war. He was absolutely 
fearless and very faithful and attached to me. 
How many lives would have been saved during 
the Matabele rebellion, if only the whites had 
listened to their boys, who weeks before hos¬ 
tilities broke out, told their masters what was 
coming, and implored them to take their wives 
and children away out of danger to Buluwayo 
and safety. In spite of certain convincing signs, 
they were not believed. The settlers went on 
blindly day after day. wilfully shutting their 
eyes to the fact that they were on the eve of 
a rebellion and not awaking until it was too 
late and they were all massacred. Even then 
some boys, in spite of the greatest risks they 
ran themselves, managed to save their masters 
and mistresses. They are an excessively cruel 
and savage race, but fine hunters and trackers. 
The Kafui River is infested with crocodiles, 
and in some reaches there are many hippos, 
but these are harndess beasts, and unless re¬ 
quired for specimens, it is a shame to destroy 
them. There is no sport in shooting a hippo, 
and the ivory is of no value, so to my mind 
there is no inducement to hunt them. 
I had been out about three weeks and had 
enjoyed plenty of sport when an incident oc¬ 
curred that decided me to return. One morn¬ 
ing I started out in a canoe, and after having 
been paddled up the stream for a few hours, 
landed and sent my own boys home to camp. 
Toward evening I struck a small village and 
told the chief I wanted to be ferried across the 
river to the south bank. He was none too civil, 
but finally got a canoe ready. Half way across, 
I saw a cow hippo with a small calf, and made 
up my mind to try to catch the little one and 
raise it. I explained to the natives what I 
wished done, but they would have none of it, 
saying that the old cow would upset the canoe 
and they would either be drowned or taken by 
crocodiles. I was annoyed but realized that if 
they would not assist me, it was useless to at¬ 
tempt it, and in spite of all my arguments and 
promises of presents, they insisted that I had 
bargained with them to take me across the 
river, and that was all they intended to do. It 
was disappointing, but they were in the right. 
They did not know me, and a cow hippo with a 
calf in a deep river infested with crocodiles, is 
certainly not a thing to be trifled with, so I 
had to leave her alone. She did not appear to 
notice us, but continued playing about and 
rolling in the water with her young one. 
The next morning, I returned with my own 
boys, with ropes and £verything necessary to 
catch the calf, but could see no signs of them, 
and was just thinking of moving back, when 
I got news that there was a school of hippo in 
a large pool above. We landed and 1 went 
forward with John to reconnoiter. It was a 
grand sight, but then common enough on the 
Zambesi. In this one pool there were no less 
than five large hippo, lying on the top of the 
water apparently asleep. The calf was not 
among them. For two hours we remained there 
watching, but not seeing what we were after, 
we left them undisturbed. 
In the evening I returned again, but saw 
nothing at all, and next morning moved camp 
about ten miles further up the river. There 
was very little pleasure attached to this. The 
mosquitoes were very bad, and being continu¬ 
ally bitten by mosquitoes means only one thing 
in the end, and that is an attack of malarial 
fever. 
The following day a boy came in with the 
news that a cow and calf hippo were in a large 
swampy pool about a mile and a half from the 
river, and so we lost no time in going after her. 
.\pproaching carefully, we saw the cow and 
calf lying in the mud and water, but I do not 
think they were the same two—the calf was 
