Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/170

 Sesheke half of it is always sent to the king, and the breast reserved for the royal table. It is at night-time that the hippopotamus generally goes to its pasturage, in the choice of which it is very particular, sometimes making its way eight or nine miles along the river-bank, and returning at daybreak to its resort in the river or lagoons, where its presence is revealed by its splashes and snorts. Occasionally it is found asleep in the forests ten miles or more away from the water. In eastern and southern Matabele-land, and in the Mashona country, where they are found in the affluents of the Limpopo and the Zarmbesi it is a much less difficult matter to capture them, and Matabele traders have told me that they have seen Mashonas attack them in the water with broad-bladed daggers, and soon overpower them.

In time past hippopotamuses were common throughout South Africa, and the carvings of the bushmen would go to prove that they not only frequented the rivers, but found their way to the salt rain-pans; they are still to be found in the rivers of Natal, and I was told in Cape Colony that they are in existence in Kaffraria; but in Central South Africa they are not seen south of the Limpopo.

The Zambesi abounds with crocodiles, but we did not see one that day.

The shores of the river here consisted of alternate strata of clay and earth, varying from two to eighteen inches in thickness, the mould made up of alluvial soil and decayed vegetable matter. In some places where the outflow from some hollow in the plain had made itself a channel to the river, the natives had dammed it up by an embankment of rushes ten feet high. We travelled at the rate of