The heart of Africa, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Georg August Schweinfurth

3. The bed of the river at the third place, where I submitted it to my examination, was 328 feet wide, and on the 18th and 25th of December was full. For a distance of sixty feet from the right-hand bank, the depth of the water was little more than a foot, then for 100 feet in the middle of the stream it was about two feet, and subsequently for the remainder of the width as far as the left bank it increased to four feet. On the western shore, where the river depression stretched out in wide tracts, the current was far stronger than on the eastern, where the wooded rocks extend close down to the edge of the water. Near this place the condition of the depression of the river was exceptional, being of an equal breadth of about 600 feet on either side of the stream.

4. The bed of the stream at the last of my points of observation was, according to the measuring-line, 492 feet wide. On the 25th of December, 1870, it was only half full of water. Near the reedy left-hand bank alone was the water of any considerable depth: at that spot it was about four feet deep, but nowhere else was it more than two feet. The current was strongest in the middle of the stream: it is a peculiarity of the Dyoor that its current has always the same velocity, and does not appear to be at all affected by the variations in the height of the water.

I sat for hours upon the rocky slopes of the right bank of the river watching the hippopotamuses as they plunged about in the water, and occasionally firing at them as opportunities occurred for an aim; but a light rifle was all that I had saved from the fire, and the small shot that it carried did not have much effect upon the unwieldy beasts. The range of my rifle was rarely more than 150 feet, and of the hundred shots that I discharged very few did any serious damage, and only two animals appeared to be mortally wounded. Early on the following morning the natives of the surrounding districts found the body of one of the creatures that I had killed by a bullet behind the ear lying amongst the reeds in the river-bed, and they spent several hours in cutting up the ponderous carcase.

The colour of nearly all these animals was a dark fleshy red, almost like raw meat, marked irregularly with large black spots; I also saw specimens of a lighter shade, but never of a pure white; in the sunshine their damp bodies assumed quite a blueish-grey hue. Half of the hippopotamuses that I noticed at this deep part of the river, which extended for about a mile, were females carrying their young, which at this season seemed very weak and undeveloped, and sat astride on the short necks of their mothers. The females appeared to rise to the surface of the water for the sake of their young far more frequently than was necessary for their own accommodation, and unlike the males, which usually show their mouth and nostrils, they only lifted their young above the water, whilst their own heads generally remained invisible. The animals seem to utter different sounds at different seasons; they now snorted and grunted, or rather groaned, and the sharp rattling gurgle was less distinct than in the spring. In the sunlight the fine spray emitted from their nostrils gleamed like a ray of light.

Now and then, with a frightful roar that resounded far away, the males would leap violently from the water, displaying all the forepart of their huge body; they seemed to be scuffling together, but whether they were quarrelling for a monopoly of the limited space, or whether they had been hit by some of my bullets, I could not determine. Their small pointed ears were remarkably flexible, and were continually moving to and fro as the animals listened to distant sounds or flapped away the settling insects. All other characteristics of the hippopotamus are so well known that it would be superfluous to introduce any further description of them here.

THE TENANTS OF THE DYOOR.

To the same degree as its waters were enlivened by fish and hippopotamuses, were the banks of the Dyoor animated by birds and many varieties of animals. The forests were denizened by several species of the monkey family, that during the winter months found there an abundant harvest of ripened fruit. The grotesque form of the red-billed Nashorr-bird rocked to and fro on the half-bare branches, and one of the most splendid of African birds, the sky-blue Elminia, was especially frequent. The bare sand-flats in the half dry river-bed were the favourite resorts of the water-birds. The quaint-looking umbers (Scopus umbretta), which are generally seen sitting solitary by the shady swamps in the woods, were here marshalled along the banks in flocks of twelve or fifteen; these birds, with their ponderous crested heads pensively drooping in the noontide heat, seemed in their “sombre weeds” rather to belong to the dreary wastes of the chilly north than to the smiling grass-plains of the Upper Nile. Then there were the great herons (Mycteria senegalensis) gravely strutting about, or skimming the dark blue surface of the water on their silvery pinions. The Khartoomers call this bird Aboo Mieh, or father of hundreds, in commemoration of the munificence of a traveller who is said to have given a hundred piastres (five dollars) for the first specimens of this noble bird. In other places the sacred ibises had congregated into groups, and with their bills turned towards the water, stood or squatted motionless under the vertical beams of the midday sun. The return of the dry and cool winter months regularly brings these birds, like their compatriots the Khartoomers, into the more southerly negro-countries. Ever and again the sharp cry of the osprey from some invisible quarter would rouse the traveller from his reveries, as though by its yelling laughter it were mocking at his meditations. Storks, which are so prominent a feature in the Central Soudan, and are so highly reverenced in Adamawa, did not appear in these regions, and throughout my journey to the Niam-niam I never saw them.

We were hard at work on the following day in turning the huge carcase of the hippopotamus to account for our domestic use. My people boiled down great flasks of the fat which they took from the layers between the ribs, but what the entire produce of grease would have been I was unable to determine, as hundreds of natives had already cut off and appropriated pieces of the flesh. When boiled, hippopotamus-fat is very similar to pork-lard, though in the warm climate of Central Africa it never attains a consistency firmer than that of oil. Of all animal fats it appears to be the purest, and at any rate never becomes rancid, and will keep for many years without requiring any special process of clarifying; it has, however, a slight flavour of train-oil, to which it is difficult for a European to become accustomed. It is stated in some books that hippopotamus-bacon is quite a delicacy, but I can by no means concur in the opinion; I always found it unfit for eating, and when cut into narrow strips and roasted, it was as hard and tough as so much rope; the same may be said of the tongue, which I often had smoked and salted. The meat is remarkably fibrous, and is one continuous tissue of sinews.

KURBATCHES.

Several hundred Nile-whips or kurbatches can be made from the hide of a single animal, and afterwards, in Egypt, my servants made a profitable little market by selling the whips, for which they found a ready demand. By a proper application of oil, heat, and friction, they may be made as flexible as gutta percha. The fresh skin is easily cut crosswise into long quadrilateral strips, and when half dry, the edges are trimmed with a knife, and the strips are hammered into the round whips as though they were iron beaten on an anvil. The length of these much dreaded “knouts” of the south is represented by half the circumference of the body of the hippopotamus, the stump end of the whip, which is about as thick as one’s finger, corresponding to the skin on the back, whilst the point is the skin of the belly.