Something pathetic attaches to the death of the mother of “our hero,”—something which touches our common nature, but which such hunters as Mr. Gordon Cumming would not be at all able to understand. A large female hippopotamus being wounded, was in full flight up the river; but presently a ball or two reached a mortal part, and then the maternal instinct made the animal pause. She fled no more, but turned aside, and made towards a heap of brushwood and water-bushes that grew on the banks of the river, in order (as the event showed) to die beside her young one. She was unable to proceed so far, and sank dying beneath the water. The action, however, had been so evidently caused by some strong impulse and attraction in that direction, that the party instantly proceeded to the clump of water-bushes. Nobody moved—not a green flag stirred; not a sprig trembled; but directly they entered, out burst a burly young hippopotamus-calf, and plunged head foremost down the river banks. He had all but escaped, when amidst the excitement and confusion of the picked men, one of them who had “more character” than the rest, made a blow at the slippery prize with his boat-hook, and literally brought him up by burying the hook in his fat black flank. Two other hunters—next to him in presence of mind and energy—threw their arms round the great barrel-bellied infant, and hoisted him into the boat, which nearly capsized with the weight and struggle. In this one circumstance of a hippopotamus being ordered by his Highness Abbas Pasha, has been pleasantly shown the ease and brevity with which matters are managed by a despotic government. We complain at home—and with how much reason, everybody knows too well—of the injurious and provoking slowness of all good legislative acts; but here we have a beautiful little instance, or series of little instances, of going rather too fast. Things are settled off-hand in the East by a royal mandate—from the strangling of a whole seraglio, to the suckling of a young hippopotamus.