The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
return from Fuga. As at Harar, a visitor can never calculate upon a prompt dismissal. We were too strong for force, but Sultan Kimwere has detained Arab and other strangers for a fortnight before his mganga fixed a fit time for audience. Moreover, these walking journeys are dangerous in one point: the least accident disables a party, and accidents will happen to the best-regulated expedition.
"Our feet were cut by boots and shoes, and we had lost 'leather' by chafing and sunburns. A few days' rest removed these inconveniences. Our first visit was paid to Pangany, where Said bin Salim, who had watched his charge with the fidelity of a shepherd's dog, received us with joyous demonstrations. After spending a day upon the coast, we returned, provided with munitions de bouche and other necessaries, to Chogway, and settled old scores with our escort. Then, as the vessel in which we were to cruise southward was not expected from Zanzibar till the 1st of March, and we had a week to spare, it was resolved to try a fall with Behemoth.4
Hippopotamus Shooting.
"Captain Owen's officers, when ascending streams, saw their boats torn by Behemoth's hard tusks; and in the Pangany, one 'Sultan Momba,' a tyrant thus dubbed by the Belochies in honour of their friend the Kohoday chief, delighted to upset canoes, and was once guilty of breaking a man's leg.
"Behold us now, O brother in St. Hubert, dropping down the stream in a monoxyle, some forty feet long, at early dawn, when wild beasts are tamest.
"As we approach the herds, whose crests, flanked with small pointed ears, dot the mirrory surface, our boatmen indulge in such vituperations as 'Mana marira!' (O big belly!) and 'Hanamkia!' (O tasteless one!) In angry curiosity the brutes raise their heads, and expose their arched necks, shiny with trickling rills. Jack, a man of speculative turn, experiments upon the nearest optics with two barrels of grape and B shot. The eyes, however, are oblique; 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 proves the enemy to be swimming under water towards the further end of the pool. After a weary time he must rise and breathe. As the smooth water undulates, swells, and breaches a way for the large black head, eight ounces of lead fly in the right direction. There is a splash, a struggle; the surface foams, and Behemoth, with mouth bleeding like a gutter-spout, rears, and plunges above the stream. Wounded near the cerebellum, he cannot swim straight. At last a coup de grâce speeds through the air; the brute sinks, gore dyes the surface purple, and bright bubbles seethe up from the bottom. Hippo is dead. We wait patiently for his reappearance, but he appears not. At length, by peculiar good luck, Bombay's sharp eye detects an 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 hawk suffers the penalty of impudence. We tow our defunct to the bank, and deliver it to certain savages, whose mouths water with the prospect of hippopotamus beef. At sundown they will bring to us the tusks and head picked clean, as a whistle is said to be.
"The herd will no longer rise; they fear this hulking craft; we must try some 'artful dodge.' Jack, accompanied by Bombay, who strips to paddle in token of hot work expected, enters into a small canoe, ties fast his shooting-tackle in case of an upset, and, whilst I occupy one end of the house, makes for the other. Whenever a head appears an inch above water, a heavy bullet 'puds' into or near it; crimson patches adorn the stream; some die and disappear, others plunge in crippled state, and others, disabled from diving by holes drilled through their noses, splash and scurry about with curious snorts, caused by breath passing through their wounds. At last Jack ventures upon another experiment. An infant hippo, with an imprudence pardonable at his years, uprears his crest; off flies the crown of the kid's head. The bereaved mother rises for a moment, viciously regards Jack, who is meekly loading, snorts a parent's curse, and dives as the cap is being adjusted. Presently a bump, a shock, and a heave send the little canoe's bows high in the air. Bombay, describing a small parabola in frog-shape, lands beyond the enraged brute's back. Jack steadies himself in the stern, and as the assailant, with broad dorsum hunched up and hogged like an angry cat, advances for another bout, he rises, and sends a bullet through her side. Bombay scrambles in, and, nothing daunted, paddles towards the quarry, of which nothing is visible but a long waving line of gore. With a harpoon we might have secured her; now she will feed the alligators or the savages.
"The Belochies still take great interest in the sport, as Easterns will when they see work being done. They force the boatmen to obey us. Jack lands with the black woodmen, carrying both 'smashers.' He gropes painfully through mangrove thicket, where parasitical oysters wound the legs with their sharp edges, and the shaking bog admits a man to his knees. After a time, reaching a clear spot, he takes up position behind a bush impending the deepest water, and signals me to drive up the herd. In pursuit of them I see a hole bursting in the stream, and a huge black head rises with a snort and a spirt. 'Momba! Momba!' shout the Belochies, yet the old rogue disdains flight. A cone from the Colt strikes him full in front of the ear; his brain is pierced; he rises high, falls with a crash upon the wave, and all that flesh 'cannot keep in a little life.' Momba has for ever disappeared from the home of hippopotamus; never shall he break nigger's leg again. Meanwhile the herd, who, rubbing their backs against the great canoe, had retired to the other end of the pool, hearing an unusual noise, rise, as is their wont, to gratify a silly curiosity. Jack has two splendid standing shots, and the splashing and circling in the stream below tell the accuracy of the aim.
"We soon learned the lesson that these cold-blooded animals may be killed with a pistol-ball if hit in brain or heart; otherwise they carry away as much lead as elephants. At about ten a.m. we had slain six, besides wounding I know not how many of the animals. They might be netted, but the operation would not pay in a pecuniary sense; the ivory of small teeth, under four pounds each, is worth little. Being perpetually pop-gunned by the Belochies, they are exceedingly shy, and after an excess of bullying they shift quarters. We returned but once to this sport, finding the massacre monotonous, and such cynegetics about as exciting as partridge-shooting.
"On Thursday, the 26th of February, we left 'the bazar.' Jack walked to Pangany, making a route survey, whilst I accompanied the Jemadar and his tail in our large canoe.
Our First Fever.
"For two days after returning to the coast we abstained from exercise. On the third we walked out several miles, in the hottest of suns, to explore a cavern, of which the natives, who came upon it when clearing out a well, had circulated the most exaggerated accounts. Jack already complained of his last night's labour—an hour with the sextant upon damp sand in the chilly dew. This walk finished the work. On entering the house we found the Portuguese lad, who had accompanied us to Fuga, in a high fever. Jack was prostrated a few hours afterwards, and next day I followed their example.
"As a rule, the traveller in these lands should avoid exposure and fatigue beyond a certain point, to the very best of his ability. You might as well practise sitting upon a coal-fire as inuring yourself (which green men have attempted) to the climate. Dr. B——, a Polish divine, who had taken to travelling at the end of a sedentary life, would learn to walk bareheaded in the Zanzibar sun; the result was a sunstroke. Others have paced barefooted upon an exposed terrace, with little consequence but ulceration and temporary lameness. The most successful in resisting the climate are they who tempt it least, and the best training for a long hungry march is repose, with good living. Man has then stamina to work upon; he may exist, like the camel, upon his own fat. Those who fine themselves down by exercise and abstinence before the march, commit the error of beginning where they ought to end.
"Our attacks commenced with general languor and heaviness, a lassitude in the limbs, a weight in the head, nausea, a frigid sensation creeping up the extremities, and dull pains in the shoulders. Then came a mild, cold fit, succeeded by a splitting headache, flushed face, full veins, vomiting, and an inability to stand upright. Like 'General Tazo' of Madagascar, this fever is a malignant bilious-remittent. The eyes become hot, heavy, and painful when turned upwards; the skin is dry and burning, the pulse full and frequent, and the tongue furred; appetite is wholly wanting (for a whole week I ate nothing), but a perpetual craving thirst afflicts the patient, and nothing that he drinks will remain upon his