Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/283

 of antiquity which I had seen in Egypt, and a whole chain of classical circumstances connected with the history of the Nile were brought to my recollection, while the idea that I was sitting by a branch of the same stream, though at the distance of eleven hundred miles from its junction with the sea, added in an extraordinary degree to the interest which such feelings inspired. While my attention was absorbed by these reflections, the noise of an hippopotamus rising to the surface, and the cry of our attendants, "Gomari," "Gomari," roused me from my meditations, and the sight of so rare and stupendous an animal pretty speedily gave a new turn to my thoughts. The view we obtained of this creature was only instantaneous, and its action appeared to me at the moment greatly to resemble the rolling of a grampus in the sea.

The point on which we stood commanded a small extent only of the river; as in this part of its course it makes a considerable bend, owing to the abruptness of the rocks on its western bank, which, rising up immediately opposite, completely intercepted from our view the higher summits of the mountains. As we advanced up the line of the stream we found it interrupted by frequent overfalls, a circumstance that renders it fordable at almost every season of the year. Between these fords deep holes or pits intervene, of almost immeasurable depth, which when viewed from a height present a similar appearance to the small lochs or tarns found among our own mountains in the north: and it is in these depths that the hippopotamus chiefly delights. After proceeding a short distance, we arrived at one of the most frequented of their haunts, where several of these animals were observed, when, after partially taking off our clothes we crossed the river with our guns, for the purpose of getting a more convenient and secure situation to attack them: the eastern side, from its being flat and sandy, affording no advantage of this nature. The stream at this time might be about fifty yards across, and, at the ford over which we passed, about three feet deep, flowing with a moderate current, like the Thames at Richmond,