The Pasha, knowing that all means of speed will be used, and what those means will be, together with the nature of the route, is able to calculate to a day when the Commander ought to arrive—and therefore _must_ arrive,—at his peril, otherwise. The British Consul is invited to dine with his Highness on this day. Duly, as expected, the Commander of the Nubian army arrives, and is announced, just as the repast is concluded. He is forthwith ushered into the presence of the sublime beard and turban. Coffee and pipes are being served. The Commander makes his grand salam, shutting his eyes before the royal pipe. “Commander,” says the Pasha, without taking his pipe from his mouth, “I hear that you have hippopotami in your country.” “It is true, your Highness; but——” “Bring me a live hippopotamus—a young one. Now, go!” This was actually the dialogue which took place on the occasion—and the whole of it. The Commander of the Nubian forces made his grand salam—retired—and returned as he came,—“big” with the importance of his errand,—but also not without considerable anxiety for its result. Arriving at Dongola, the Commander summoned his chief officers and captains of the Nubian hosts to a council of war on the subject of the hippopotamus hunt, on the result of which—he intimated—several heads were at stake, besides his own. A similar communication was speedily forwarded to the chief officers of the right wing of the army, quartered in their tents at Sennaar. The picked men of all the forces having been selected, the two parties met in boats at an appointed village on the banks of the Nile, and there concerted their measures for the expedition. The Commander divided the chosen body into several parties, and away they sped up the Nile. They followed the course of the river, beyond the point where it branches off into the Blue Nile, and the White Nile. Good fortune at length befel one of the parties; but this cost much time, and many unsuccessful efforts—now pursuing a huge savage river-horse, with rifle-balls and flying darts; now pursued by him in turn with foaming jaws and gnashing tusks—all of which may readily be conjectured, from the fact that they did not fall in with their prize till they had reached a distance, up the White Nile, of one thousand five hundred miles above Cairo. In the doublings and re-doublings of attack and retreat, of pursuit and flight, and renewed assault, they must of course have traversed in all, at least two thousand miles.