File:The game animals of Africa (1908) (14755386245).jpg

Identifier: gameanimalsofafr00lyde (find matches)
Title: The game animals of Africa
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Lydekker, Richard, 1849-1915
Subjects: Game and game-birds Hunting Big game animals
Publisher: London, R. Ward, limited
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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in search of food. In walking, the hippopotamus moves the front and hind foot of each side in parallel lines, thus forming in soft or muddy ground two parallel tracks, divided from one another by a little ridge of sand or mud. The same paths are followed year after year, and often lead one in a bee-line across a bend in a river, from one deep pool to another, through miles of dense jungle, or over rocky, broken hills, into which one would imagine that no hippopotamus would ever venture. On the lower Umfuli river in northern Mashonaland there are places where the stream has cut a channel through beds of hard rock, enclosed between ranges of low stony hills, and in such situations the hippopotamuses have, in the course of ages, worn well-defined paths in the rock leading from one pool to another. These paths worn into the stone present exactly the appearance of a hippopotamus-track freshly made in soft ground, there being a low ridge of stone running down the middle corresponding to HIPPOPOTAMUS 407
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4o8 SWINE GROUP the ridge of mud in a modern track. In certain places on these rock-paths, where a sudden ascent had to be made to a higher ledge, the edges of the higher levels of hard rock are beautifully polished by the bellies of the numbers of hippopotamuses which, in the course of ages, have rubbed against them. Where hippopotamuses have never been fired at, they are tame, and even inquisitive. I once found a herd in a small rock-pool on the lower Umfuli river, the members of which had probably never seen a man with clothes on before, as they showed no fear whatever, but, as I sat on a rock at the edge of the pool, came up within a few yards, and remained with their heads in full view for a long time, staring stolidly at the unwonted sight, and continually twitching their little ears. In large rivers like the Zambesi, Shire, or Chobi, where the hippopotamuses have been hunted by the natives for ages, they are usually wideawake, and often inclined to be vicious. Natives, indeed, endeavour to

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