his disposition one day as we were crossing Lake Naivasha. I was sitting at the tiller in the stern of the boat about half asleep in the hot sun of midday when there was a sudden explosion and our boat was lifted well out of the water. The keel had struck the back of a submerged hippopotamus. He came up thirty yards away with his mouth open, but he made no attempt to attack. We had the good luck to come down right side up, shipping only a little water. I hope he was as badly frightened as I was.
Because he is so little sport, even the pot hunters have left the hippo alone. However, most of the African tribes consider hippopotamus meat good eating and he is frequently killed by the natives for food. The fact is that in times of famine this animal is a valuable source of supply. In 1906, when we were on the Tana River, I found a bone yard with the bones of a great number of hippopotami along with various human bones. In a famine some fifteen or twenty years earlier, so the story goes, the natives had gravitated toward the Tana River to kill hippopotami to keep from starving and there had fought over this last source of food.
Double rows of tracks with grass growing between them, like those made by a wagon, trail along the Tana and are cut deep into the river's banks, where through long years the hippos have come up at night to graze and browse. His is a double track, because in travelling he does not place one foot before the other. He finds no food in the water, but he is at home there, and sometimes travels long distances
