Hippo Regius

“ The hippo now rose to the surface, about ten yards from the hunters, and, jumping half out of the water, he snapped his great jaws together, endeavouring to catch the rope, but at the same instant two harpoons were launched into his side. ”

“ He was short and tubby; if he had been any shorter he would have been a human Humpty-Dumpty. He was so obviously enjoying himself and getting the best out of his gambols in the water that my heart went out to him. He was ducking and splashing about, rolling and wallowing in a way that reminded me of a hippopotamus I had once shot at—and missed—in happier if not more spacious days spent on the lower Nile. "The Hippo" I christened him, and then chuckled to myself at the singular appropriateness of the name.
Even his bathing dress seemed designed expressly to add to his rotundity. ”

“ There is in Africa a town called Hippo, situated not far from the sea-coast: it stands upon a navigable lake, communicating with an estuary in the form of a river, which alternately flows into the lake, or into the ocean, according to the ebb and flow of the tide. People of all ages amuse themselves here with fishing, sailing, or swimming; especially boys, whom love of play brings to the spot. With these it is a fine and manly achievement to be able to swim the farthest; and he that leaves the shore and his companions at the greatest distance gains the victory. ”

“ Caliph’s great delight was to take his master on his broad back and plunge into the swimming pool.
Our critical friends say that a Hippopotamus is not intelligent enough to be trained; that they are vicious, are not to be trusted, and have no memory. I give you these facts to disprove their theory and to give the Hippo a square deal. I feel that he is a much maligned beast. Many of them are loving, gentle and faithful, if handled by those who love and want to understand them. ”

“ But he disdained the goddess, as he could not marry the statue; and taking the courtesan Lamia, he ascended the Acropolis, and lay with her on the couch of Athene, showing to the old virgin the postures of the young courtesan.
There is no cause for indignation, then, at Hippo, who immortalized his own death. For this Hippo ordered the following elegy to be inscribed on his tomb:
“This is the sepulchre of Hippo, whom Destiny
Made, through death, equal to the immortal gods.” Well done, Hippo! thou showest to us the delusion of men. ”

“ The Hippo is certainly not handsome. He has a huge barrel body submerged in fat mounted on short stumpy legs and a gigantic head with a mouth of such enormous size and capacity as to be positively terrifying. The huge, horse-like nose is covered with stiff bristles, the nostrils flare like fans, the eyes bulge, and the forehead is low and flat, with two foolish looking ears sticking up on either side of it.
The weight of this great beast averages from four thousand to eight thousand pounds. ”

“ JUNO TAKES CARE OF THE YOUNG HIPPOPOTAMUS.
So Juno took charge of the young hippo,—she called him hippo for short, and only when he was naughty she called him: "Hip-po-pot-a-mus, aren't you ashamed of yourself?" But he was a great trial. He was awkward and clumsy, and not a bit like her graceful little lion-puppies. ”

“ Hippo is very good eating when you cannot get anything better; it has a strong, rather musky flavor which I do not like, and I find that most other white men have tastes similar to mine in this respect. But a Kafir, or any other black-skinned native of Africa, is not at all particular, and you might empty a bottleful of musk over his dinner without interfering with his appetite.
I did not say a word to Harry and Jack until dinner about the hunter I met in the forest. I told them briefly about my elephant-hunt, but we all were too busy for anything else until we got seated at the table ”

“ The hunter next goes to the handle and hauls on the rope until he knows that he is right over the beast. When he feels the line suddenly slacken, he is prepared to deliver another harpoon the instant that hippo's enormous jaws appear, with a terrible grunt, above the water. ”

“ Two of them came to Hippo, a brother and a sister, Paulus and Palladia, already known in many other places by the fame of their wretched lot. Now it was about fifteen days before Easter when they came, and they came daily to church, and specially to the relics of the most glorious Stephen, praying that God might now be appeased, and restore their former health. There, and wherever they went, they attracted the attention of every one. ”

“ The upper and lower front teeth of the hippos are very long and contain magnificent ivory which is distinguished from the elephant's by the fact that it never turns yellow. The flesh is good to eat but it is tough and oily, nevertheless many native tribes consider it a great delicacy. The whole hide weighs about six hundred pounds and often more. The african natives make whips out of a single piece of skin, and they are said to last forever.
Sometimes a prowling leopard is foolish enough to risk its life trying to steal a baby hippo. ”

“ His youth, too, gives him a special claim to the consideration of the ladies, for he is a little darling of only three years—a very baby of a hippopotamus in fact, who, only a few months ago, daily sucked his few gallons of lacteal nourishment from the fond bosom of mamma Hippo, at the bottom of some murmuring Egyptian river. The young gentleman is about as heavy as an ox, and gives you the idea that he is the result of the amalgamation of a horse, a cow, two pigs, a seal, a dozen India-rubber blankets, and an old-fashioned horse-hide covered trunk. ”

“ At last nearly all lower Africa [78] was occupied by the Numidians; and all the conquered tribes were merged in the nation and name of their conquerors.
XIX. At a later period, the Phoenicians, some of whom wished to lessen their numbers at home, and others, ambitious of empire, engaged the populace, and such as were eager for change, to follow them, founded Hippo, [79] Adrumetum, Leptis, [80] and other cities, on the sea-coast; which, soon growing powerful, became partly a support, and partly an honor, to their parent state. ”

“ The legend of the Greeks makes Heracles, i. e. Baal Melkarth, lord of the whole West. As a fact, the colonies of the Phenicians went beyond Sardinia in this direction. Their first colonies on the north coast of Africa appear to have been planted where the shore runs out nearest Sicily; Hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony. [162] In the legends of the coins mentioned above (p. 53) Hippo is named beside Tyre and Citium as a daughter of Sidon. ”

“ Lion get his long hair?”
“Oh dear! don’t you know?” laughed Jocko, “Mrs. Lion pulled it so much it made it long. She hasn’t any, you see. Oh dear, yes, Mr. Lion is a henpecked husband if ever there was one.”
“You don’t tell me so,” said Tito. “What about Hippo? How did it happen he is so big and clumsy?”
“Oh, don’t you know?” said Jocko. “When the animals were being made there was a lot of each animal left and it was all stirred together, and that made Hippo. They made his body first and then they did not have enough to give him a long tail or fill in his mouth. ”

“ The hippo, roaring frightfully, pulled one way, Bartlett and the keepers pulled the other, and at last out came the tooth, and Hippo soon got well again.
No animal in this world is made without a purpose, and we always find that the structure of an animal is admirably adapted to its mode of life. I believe that one of the principal duties which the elephant and rhinoceros unconsciously perform, is to cut paths through the dense forests and jungles in which they live. The home of the hippopotamus is among the aquatic forests at the bottoms of large rivers such as the Upper Nile. ”

“ At 10 p.m. we decide to take the big iron boat of the steamer and go hunting. The natives are exceedingly skilful and know all the likely places for hippo. They first paddle hard up stream and having arrived at the hunting ground allow the boat to drift down with the current in perfect silence. It is clear moonlight, but it is necessary to cover the fore sight of the rifle with white paper in order to see it clearly. After a time, up rises a great head with a great pant and there is just time for a shot before it sinks again. Hippos frequent shallow water and are indifferent swimmers. ”

“ But the terrible scandal Pa had brought upon the expedition was settled out of court, and Pa was reinstated in good standing in our expedition.
It takes a hippo quite a while to go to sleep after eating a negro, as you can imagine, they are so indigestible, and it was annoying to stand around in the mud and 190wait, but we finally got two specimens of the hippo into the cages, and we killed two more for food for the negroes, who like the flavor of hippo meat, after the hippos have been battered on negroes. ”

“ The hippopotamus or hippo as it is generally called, is another mighty animal that is rapidly being exterminated by man. At one time it was a common sight to see many hippos feeding together on the banks of the Nile as far north as Cairo but now they are never found beyond Khartoum, which if you will look at the atlas you will find is many miles to the south of the Mediterranean Sea. ”

“ Just as the march started, old Fisheye Gleason, a seasoned old retainer who cleaned out cages, fed the animals, and who claimed he was with Noah when he landed his animal collection on Mount Ararat; old Fisheye was climbing down from the top of a cage when he stumbled and fell right on the back of a hippo. Now a hippo isn't classed with the smart animals. He makes up in bulk what he lacks in brains. ”

“ At the same time we wanted to do something, and so it was proposed that we go down to the river—about two miles—and try for a hippopotamus. The hippo is a difficult beast to shoot, as he sticks pretty closely to the water, and it is very unusual to find him on land. The time he spends out of the water is nearly always at night. The natives take advantage of this peculiarity of the beast, and make traps and pitfalls for him ”

“ The Hippopotamus inhabits all swamps and rivers, and is also found in the sheltered bays of Lake Tanganyika, where these animals are constantly seen in herds of from twenty to thirty. The export of Hippo hide appears to be increasing, as a good price can now be obtained for it in the South African market. ”

“ Now letters went to the coast every week.... ‘My dear sir,’ he cried, ‘I write from dictation.’ I demanded rivets. There was a way—for an intelligent man. He changed his manner; became very cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer (I stuck to my salvage night and day) I wasn’t disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. ”

“ The little Hippo had a red skin like a young baby. He was fat as a butter ball and somewhat resembled a pig. His master took him home, fed him on a diet of bread and milk, and made him a little pen with a pool of water in it.
Caliph became very much attached to his master. He soon learned to follow him about like a dog. Sometimes the little fellow would grieve for his mother and wistfully think of the rides he took on her broad, safe back, because he was too small to keep up with her when he swam beside her. ”

“ The Grenadier officers pronounced such proceedings cruel and cowardly, but were without authority to put a stop to it. The crocodile is deemed lawful sport because it endangers life, but the Hippo. Transvaal law protects, because it rarely does harm, and is growing rarer year by year. I ventured therefore to tell these Colonials that their sportsmanship was as bad as their marksmanship, and that the pleasure which springs from inflicting profitless pain was an unsoldierly pursuit; but I preached to deaf ears, and when soon after our camp was broken up that Hippo. ”

“ In Hippo, these atrocities were known before the Barbarians arrived. The people must have awaited them and prepared to receive them with gloomy resignation. Africa had not been tranquil for a century. After the risings of Firmus and Gildo, came the lootings of the southern Nomads and the Berber mountaineers. And it was not so long since the Circoncelliones were keeping people constantly on the alert. ”

“ I was now well into the domain of the hippopotamus. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Kasai in places is alive with them. You can shoot one of these monsters from the bridge of the river boats almost as easily as you could pick off a sparrow from the limb of a park tree. I got tired of watching them. The flesh of the hippopotamus is unfit for white consumption, but the natives regard it as a luxury. The white man who kills a hippo is immediately acclaimed a hero. One reason is that with spears the black finds it difficult to get the better of one of these animals. ”

“ Sometimes when a hippo is attacked at short range it will climb out of the water and charge its enemies on land. It is a very unwise movement for the poor creature is then much easier to kill for it is clumsy and cannot turn quickly. The natives plaster its eyes with clay or sand and then they have it at their mercy.
Hippos are wonderfully good swimmers and moreover they are able to walk along the river beds in search of food. When they sleep they float in the water with nothing but their nostrils sticking out. ”

“ Hippo belonged to a herd consisting of from twenty to thirty hippopotami—mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, relations of all kinds, and several little baby calves. They agreed well together, on the whole.
The only time they grew quarrelsome was when they were selecting new wives, or when one of them had discovered a field of corn or rice, and found that the others wanted to explore it, too. Then some nasty things were said, and some terrible fights took place; for, although a hippopotamus is such a heavy and ungainly creature, he can move swiftly when he is angry. ”