At 9 A. M. we stood upon a distant eminence to view the Falls of the Panga-ni, of which we had read a hearsay description in the pages of Lt Boteler. It somewhat suggested the Torc Cascade of guide-books. The stream, swiftly emerging from a dense dark growth of tropical jungle, hurls itself in three separate sheets, fringed with flashing foam, down a rugged wall of brown rock. The fall is broken by a midway ledge, whence a second leap precipitates the waters into a lower basin of mist-veiled stone, arched over by a fog-rainbow, the segment of a circle painted with faint prismatic hues. The spectacle must be grander during the wet season, when the river, forming a single horseshoe, acquires volume and momentum enough to clear the step that splits the now shrunken supply; in fact,
‘When copious rains have magnified the stream
Into a loud and white-robed waterfall.’
Of all natural objects the cataract most requires that first element of sublimity—size. Yet, as it is, the Panga-ni Falls, with the white spray and light mist, set off by a background of black jungle and by a framework of slaty rain-cloud, offer a picture sufficiently effective to save us from disappointment.
As we jogged onwards the heat became intense. The clouds lay close upon the cool mountain-tops: there it was winter, but the fount of life, the Soter Kosmou, the grand differentiator between Africa and Greenland, whose rays shot stingingly through the well-washed air, still parched the summer plains. At 10 A. M. our Baloch, clean worn-out by famine and fatigue, threw themselves upon the bank of a broad deep Nullah, in whose rushy and jungly bed a little water still lingered. Wild bees had hived in the tree-trunks, but none of us coveted the fate of plundering bears. The bush was rich in the ‘Melon of Abu Jahl’ (Coloquintida), and the slaves chewed the dried pulp of the calabash gourd. Half-an-hour’s rest, a cocoa-nut each, a pipe, and above all things the spes finis, somewhat restored our vigour. We resumed the march over a rolling waste of thin green grass, enlivened by occasional glimpses of the river, whose very aspect tempered the optic nerves and cooled the brain. Villages became numerous as we advanced, far distancing our Baloch, and at 3 P.M., after 14 miles, we sighted the snake-fence and the penthouses of friendly Chogwe. The Jemadar and his garrison received us with all the honours of travel, and marvelled at our speedy return from Fuga, where, as at Harar, a visitor can never reckon upon prompt dismissal. Sultan Kimwere has detained Arab and other travellers a whole fortnight before his Mganga would fix upon a fit time for audience.
Our feet were cut by hard boots and shoes, that had more than once been wetted and dried; and wherever there was chafing or burning, we had lost ‘leather’ softened by constant perspiration. A few days of rest and simple remedies, white of egg and flour-powdering, removed these small inconveniences. Our first move was to Panga-ni, where Said bin Salim, who had watched his charge with the fidelity of a shepherd’s dog, received us with joyous demonstrations. The Portuguese lad who accompanied us escaped with a few sick headaches, and we were happy to find his confrère free from African fever. After spending a day upon the seaboard, we returned, provided with munitions de bouche and other necessaries, to Chogwe. Here we paid the bill—$20 to the Jemadar in consideration of his two slaves; $5 a piece to the three hardworking portion of our Baloch, and to the drones, old Sha’aban and the lady like Rahmat, $4 and $3 respectively. Then, as the vessel in which we were to cruise southward was not expected from Zanzibar before the beginning of March, and we had a week to spare, it was resolved to try a fall with Behemoth.
The hippopotamus, called by the Wasawahili Kiboko and Mvo, and by the Arabs Bakar el Khor, ‘the creek-bullock,’ resembles a mammoth pig, with an equine head, rather than a horse or a cow. Like the mangrove, he loves the rivers and inlets where fresh water mingles with the briny tide, and, as on this coast he has been little molested, he is everywhere to be met with. In the Bights of Benin and Biafra, during three years’ wanderings, I sighted but a single specimen, and that only for a minute. When the night falls he wriggles up one of the many runs on the river bank, and wanders far to graze upon fat rich grass and to plunder grain plantations, where, like the elephant and the hog, he does much more damage than is necessary. At dawn he exchanges the dangerous open for shelter in the deep pools—the Khund of India—which as here, for instance, succeed one another in the stream-bed like the beads of a chaplet, and the place which he prefers is called by the natives his ‘house.’ In the presence of man he remains at home, fearing to expose his person while passing over the shallow covering of the sand-ridges which divide the hollows. When undisturbed he may be seen plunging porpoise-like against the stream, basking where the water is warm and not deep, dozing upon the soft miry bank, or sheltering himself under the luxuriant rhizophoræ in groups and singly, the heavy boxhead resting upon a friend’s broad stern. On terra firma he is easily killed by the puny arrow and by the tripping-trap with its spike-drop: in the water he is difficult to shoot, and unless harpooned he is scarcely to be bagged. Thoroughly startled, he exposes above the surface only his eyes and sloping brow; after a shot he will remain below for hours, raising nothing but a nostril to supply himself with air, and slipping down the moment he sights his foe. Receiving the death-wound, he sinks, and, according to the people, he clings to the bottom: he reappears only when blown up by incipient decomposition, and unless scouts are stationed, the body will rarely be found. The Arabs and Baloch declare that a trifling wound eventually proves fatal to the unwieldy form,—the water enters it, and the animal cannot leave the stream to feed. All Easterns, however, joining issue with the homœopathists, dread applying water to a wound, and the Brazilian Tupys used to cure their hurts by toasting them and by extracting the moisture before the fire. The people of Mafiyah secure him, I am told, by planting upright a gag of sharpened and hardened stick in his jaws when opened wide for attack: this improbable tale is also told concerning the natives of Kalybia and the Maidan Arabs of Assyria and their lions. The cow is timid unless driven beyond endurance or grossly insulted in the person of her calf: the bulls are more pugnacious, especially those who, expelled by the herd, live in solitary dudgeon. The ‘rogue’—generally derived from the Hindostani ‘rogi,’ sick or sorry—is found amongst hippopotami, elk, deer, and other graminivors as well as amongst elephants, lions, tigers, and the larger carnivors. The ‘rogue’ hippopotamus is an old male no longer able to hold his own against the young adults, who naturally walk off with his harem, and leave him in the surliest state of widowerhood. The man-eating lion is mostly some decrepit beast that finds it easier for his stiff muscles and worn tusks to pull down a human biped than a wild bull or an antelope. It was probably a rogue hippopotamus that caused the death of Menes, ancient king, and the modern Africans from Abyssinia southwards still lose many a life. Captain Owen’s officers when ascending these streams had their boats torn by Behemoth’s hard teeth. In the Panga-ni river ‘Sultan Mamba,’ a tyrant of the waters, thus dubbed by the Baloch in honour of their friend the Kohode chief, delighted to upset canoes in rude waggishness, and once broke a negro’s leg. For this reason men were careful to skirt the banks by day when he was supposed to be in mid-stream, and to avoid them during the dark hours when he was scrambling up and down the sides. During a subsequent battue off Wale Point we had two accidents in one day; a dugout was smashed by a blow with the Kiboko’s forehand, and the corvette’s gig, suddenly uplifted upon the tusk-points, showed a pair of corresponding holes in her bottom.
Behold us now, O brother in St Hubert! merrily dropping down stream in a monoxyle some 40 feet long, at early dawn, when wild beasts are hungriest and tamest. The Jemadar and his brother, cloaked in scarlet and armed with their slow matchlocks, sit in the stern; the polers, directed by Sidi Bombay, who is great in matters of venerie, occupy the centre, and we take up our station in the bows. The battery consists of a shot-gun for experiments, a Colt’s rifle, and two ‘smashers,’ each carrying a 4 oz. ball of zinc-hardened lead. The mise en scène is perfect: the bright flush of morning, the cool, clear air, the river, with its broad breast swelling between two rows of tall luxuriant trees, and, protruding from the mirrory surface, the black box-heads, flanked with small pointed ears, and not a little resembling the knight in old chessmen. When swimming up stream the beasts threw up the hind legs, and plunged with the action of a porpoise. As we approached them the boatmen indulged in loud and ribald vituperations, such as ‘M’áná Maríra,’ O big belly! ‘Hana ’mkía,’ O tailless one! and ‘Limundi,’ which was not explained. These insults caused them to raise their crests in angry curiosity, and to expose their arched necks of polished black, shining with the trickling rills, which caught like quicksilver the reflection of the sun.
My companion, a man of speculative turn, experiments upon the nearest optics with buckshot and two barrels of grape, for which we had a mould. The eyes, however, are obliquely placed; the charge scatters, and the brute, unhurt, slips down like a seal. This will make the herd wary. Vexed by the poor result of our trial, we pole up the rippling and swirling surface that shows the enemy to be swimming under water towards the further end of a deep pool. Our guns are at our shoulders; we know that, after a weary time, he must rise and breathe. As the smooth water undulates, swells, and breaks a way for the large square head, eight ounces of lead fly in the right direction. There is a splash, a struggle; the surface foams, and Behemoth, with open mouth like a butcher’s stall, and bleeding like a gutter-spout, plunges above the surface. Wounded in the cerebellum, he cannot swim straight, he cannot defend himself. I thought how easy it would have been, but for the crocodiles, to have done with him as the late Gordon Cumming did, and related amidst universal incredulity. In such matters the reader unconsciously asks himself ‘Could I?’ A negative is instinctively suggested, and hence his belief revolts at the story—spernit et odit. But all men cannot—in fact, very few men can—boast the eye, the nerve, and muscle of glorious Gordon Cumming.
Returning to Kiboke, the Baloch are excited, and as the game rises again, matchlocks bang dangerously as pop-guns. Presently the Jemadar, having expended three bullets—a serious consideration with your Oriental pot-hunter—retires from the contest, as we knew he would, recommending the beasts to us. Bombay punches on the boatmen, who complain that a dollar a day does not justify their facing death. At last a coup de grâce, speeding through the ear, finds out the small brain; the brute sinks, fresh gore purples the surface, and bright bubbles seethe up from the bottom. Hippo. has departed this life: we wait patiently for his reappearance, but he reappears not. At length Bombay’s sharp eye detects a dark object some hundred yards down stream: we make for it, and find our ‘bag’ brought up in a shallow by a spit of sand, and already in process of being ogled by a large fish-hawk. The fish-hawk pays the penalty of impudence. We tow the big defunct to the bank, and deliver it to a little knot of savages, who have flocked down to the stream with mouths watering at the prospect of creek-bullock beef. The meat is lawful to Moslems of the Shafei school; others reject it, as, being amphibious, it is impure. In Abyssinia they commonly eat it; here they do not. The insufferable toughness and coarseness, to say nothing of the musky bouquet, do not recommend it to Europeans. The Washenzi, however, will feast royally, grease themselves with the dripping, and at sundown bring us, according to agreement, the tusks, teeth, and skull, picked clean as a whistle is said to be. The teeth, especially of young animals, being delicately white and conical, make the prettiest handles for knives.