After paddling along for close upon three hours, I found that the reeds and bushes on the right gave way to a wide grass-plain, to which the Marutse and Masupias had given the name of Blockley’s kraal. It seemed to be full of game, and we left our canoes for a time and went ashore. Herds of buffaloes were visible on the outskirts; here, too, for the first time I saw some letshwe and puku antelopes; they were cropping the pasturage by hundreds; the letshwes were larger and the pukus smaller than blessbocks, and both, like all waterbocks, had shaggy, light-brown hair, and horns bent forward. I likewise saw some groups of rietbocks in the long grass, and in the direction of the woods were herds of zebras, as well as striped gnus, sometimes as many as twenty together.
After re-embarking, we kept close to the shore, with the object of avoiding the hippopotamuses that in the day-time frequent the middle of the stream, only rising from time to time to breathe. Whenever the current made it necessary for us to change to the opposite side of the river, I could see that the boatmen were all on the qui-vive to get across as rapidly as possible, and I soon afterwards learnt by experience what good reason they had to be cautious. We had occasion to steer outwards so as to clear a papyrus island, when all at once the men began to back water, and the one nearest me whispered the word “kubu.” He was pointing to a spot hardly 200 yards ahead, and on looking I saw first one hippopotamus’s head, and then a second, raised above the surface of the stream, both puffing out little fountains from the nostrils. They quickly disappeared, and the men paddled on gently, till they were tolerably close to the place where the brutes had been seen. Both Blockley and I cocked our guns, and had not long to wait before the heads of two young hippopotamuses emerged from beneath the water, followed first by the head of a male and then by that of a female. We fired eight shots, of which there was no doubt that two struck the old male behind the ear. The men all maintained that it was mortally wounded, and probably such was the case; but although we waited about for nearly an hour, we never saw more than the heads of the three others again. It was only with reluctance that the men were induced to be stationary so long; except they are in very small boats and properly armed with assegais they are always anxious to give the hippopotamus as wide a berth as they can.
ON THE BANKS OF THE CHOBE.
Of all the larger mammalia of South Africa I am disposed to believe that to an unarmed man the hippopotamus is the most dangerous. In its normal state it can never endure the sight of anything to which it is unaccustomed or which takes it by surprise. Let it come upon a horse, an ox, a porcupine, a log of wood, or even a fluttering garment suddenly crossing its path, and it will fly upon any of them with relentless fury; but let such object be withdrawn betimes from view, and the brute in an instant will forget all about it and go on its way entirely undisturbed.[3] Although in some cases it may happen that an unprotected man may elude the attacks of a lion, a buffalo, or a leopard except they have been provoked, he cannot indulge the hope of escaping the violence of a hippopotamus that has once got him within reach of its power.
When out of several hippopotamuses in a river one has been wounded, the rest are far more wary in coming to the surface; and should the wound have been fatal, the carcase does not rise for an hour, but drifts down the stream. The Marutse have a very simple but effectual way of landing their dead bodies; a grass rope with a stone attached is thrown across it, and by this means it is easily guided to the shore. The whole river-side population is most enthusiastic in its love of hippopotamus-hunting, and it is owing to the skill of the Marutse natives in this pursuit that they have been brought from their homes in the Upper Zambesi, and established in villages down here, where they may help to keep the court well supplied not only with fresh and dried fish, but particularly with hippopotamus-flesh.
The boats that are used as “mokoro tshi kubu” (hippopotamus-canoes) are of the smallest size, only just large enough for one; they are difficult to manage, but are very swift; the weapons employed are long barbed assegais, of which the shafts are so light that they are not heavier than the ordinary short javelins for military use.
While I was in Sesheke I heard of a sad casualty that had occurred near the town in the previous year. A Masupia on his way down the river saw a hippopotamus asleep on a sandy bank, and believing that he might make it an easy prey, approached it very gently and thrust his spear right under the shoulder. The barb, however, glinted off its side, inflicting only a trifling wound. In a second, before the man had time to get away, the infuriated brute was up, and after him. In vain he rolled himself over to conceal himself in the grass; the beast seemed resolved to trample him to pieces; he held up his right hand as a protection, and it was crushed by the monster’s fangs; he stretched out his left, and it was amputated by a single bite. He was afterwards found by some fishermen in a most mutilated state, barely able to recount his misfortune before he died.
Although I have often tasted hippopotamus-meat, I cannot say that I like it. The gelatinous skin when roasted is considered a delicacy; in its raw state it makes excellent handles for knives and workmen’s tools, as it shrinks as it dries, and takes firm hold upon the metal.
If a hippopotamus is killed within fifty miles of Sesheke half of it is always sent to the king, and the breast reserved for the royal table. It is at night-time that the hippopotamus generally goes to its pasturage, in the choice of which it is very particular, sometimes making its way eight or nine miles along the river-bank, and returning at daybreak to its resort in the river or lagoons, where its presence is revealed by its splashes and snorts. Occasionally it is found asleep in the forests ten miles or more away from the water. In eastern and southern Matabele-land, and in the Mashona country, where they are found in the affluents of the Limpopo and the Zambesi it is a much less difficult matter to capture them, and Matabele traders have told me that they have seen Mashonas attack them in the water with broad-bladed daggers, and soon overpower them.