By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul
despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society. The animal was
shipped at Alexandria, in the Ripon steamer. On the main deck was built
a house, from which were steps down into an iron tank in the hold,
containing 400 gallons of water, as a bath: it was filled with fresh
water every other day.
Early in May, the Hippopotamus was conveyed in the canal-boat, with
Hamet Safi Cannana, to Alexandria, where the debarkation was witnessed
by 10,000 spectators. The animal bore the voyage well. He lived
exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints,
yielded by the cows taken on board. He was very tame, and, like a
faithful dog, followed his Arab attendant Hamet, who was seldom away
more than five minutes without being summoned to return by a loud grunt.
Hamet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus. On May 25 they were landed
at Southampton, and sent by railway to London. On arriving at the
Zoological Society's Gardens, Hamet walked first out of the transport
van, with a bag of dates over his shoulder, and the Hippopotamus trotted
after him. Next morning he greatly enjoyed the bath which had been
prepared for him. Although scarcely twelve months old, his massive
proportions indicated the enormous power to be developed in his maturer
growth; while the grotesque expression of his physiognomy far exceeded
all that could be imagined from the stuffed specimens in museums, and
the figures which had hitherto been published from the reminiscences of
travellers.
Among the earliest visitors was Professor Owen, who first saw the
Hippopotamus lying on its side in the straw, with its head resting
against the chair in which sat the swarthy attendant. It now and then
grunted softly, and, lazily opening its thick, smooth eyelids, leered
at its keeper with a singular protruding movement of the eyeball from
the prominent socket, showing an unusual proportion of the white. The
retraction of the eyeball was accompanied by a simultaneous rolling
obliquely downwards, or inwards, or forwards. The young animal, then
ten months' old, was seven feet long, and six and a-half in girth at
the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, supported, clear of the ground,
on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs,
the two middle ones being the largest, and answering to those in the
hog. The naked hide, covering the broad back and sides, was of a dark,
india-rubber colour, with numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other,
but disposed almost transversely. The beast had just left its bath, when
a glistening secretion gave the hide, in the sunshine, a very peculiar
aspect. When the animal was younger, the secretion had a reddish colour,
and the whole surface of the hide became painted over with it every time
he quitted his bath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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