63 
tuted it the metropolis of fere, and the panorama that there presented itself have called to mind the inconsistent medleys of 
a dream. Two shaggy lions had been seen to enter a ravine, hard by, only the moment before; yet the thoughtless Hot- 
tentots, without unyoking the oxen, left the waggons standing on the very brink of a perilous precipice, and all scampered like 
school-boys to the water’s edge, to kek to de Zeekoes. One gigantic bull was making directly for the shore by a succession 
of plunges — his broad snout appearing nearer and more near every time he rose, puffing, to the surface. Creeping towards 
him, I was in the act of projecting a leaden sphere through one of his garret windows, when my eye was attracted by the 
tail of ‘a couchant lioness, thumping angrily within a few yards of my foot. To Piet she was nearer than to myself, but I 
silently drew him back by the arm, and her ladyship’s attention being completely engrossed by the oxen, she fortunately did 
not condescend to notice us, and was retiring — when Cobus, like a blockhead as he always Was; discharging his rotten old 
musket at her, she galloped back, roaring, through the middle of our party, and being joined by her mate, vanished amid 
the bushes. . 
Although, to us, the disposition of the Hippopotamus appeared indolent and peaceable enough, the animal is doubtless quite 
capable of being bullied into a rage, and then his strength and bulk could not fail to render him a formidable antagonist in 
the water. If wounded on land, he is said to charge with reckless fury, and the females are reported occasionally to display 
great ferocity in the defence of their young. Will not an old village cow do the same, if people either torment her calf, or 
persist in firing leaden bullets into herself. The few specimens that were slain by our party on ¢ferra jirma, being unfortunately 
killed outright from behind the ambush of a willow grove, by a single shot below the ear, we found no opportunity of taking 
evidence touching the behaviour of the species when worried. In the unwieldy obesity and swinish outline of the defunct 
subject, in vain was it that I sought for that colossal head, or for those cavern-like jaws, garnished with a double row of 
elephantine tusks, with which, after tearing off the keel of a vessel, Behemoth wantonly cuts in twain the bodies of her crew. 
Fruitlessly did I search, too, for those ponderous feet, under which the “ formidable and ferocious quadruped” is prone, during 
his nocturnal forays, “to trample down whole fields of corn during a single night!” Defenceless and inoffensive, his awkward, 
bloated, and shapeless trunk, is but feebly supported upon clumsy and disproportioned legs; and his cylindrical barrel almost 
trailing upon the ground, whilst he might not inaptly be likened unto an overgrown prize pig, a still more befitting similitude 
would probably be found in a tun of blubber, hoisted upon a wooden rack. Though the bulls may often weigh about three 
tons, the largest of many goodly specimens of obesity that were hauled on shore during our campaign, measured less than five 
feet at the shoulder; and the reality falling thus lamentably short of the monstrous conception that I had formed of the mighty 
River Horse,—His Corpulence proved the first, and indeed the only, South African game quadruped, in which I felt disap- 
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