The monotony of the voyage was broken one day by the appearance of a hippopotamus close to Sir Samuel’s boat. He was about half grown, and in an instant a score of men jumped into the water to seize him. The captain caught him by the hind-leg; and then the crowd rushed in, and, with ropes thrown from the vessel, slipped nooses over his head. A grand struggle ensued, but as it seemed likely to result in a victory for the hippopotamus, Sir Samuel slew him with a rifle ball. The Arab seamen, who have an extraordinary appetite, like the old school-men, for the most trivial arguments, observing that the animal had been “bullied” and scarred by some other and stronger hippopotamus, plunged into a fierce contention on the point whether he had been misused by his father or his mother. As they could not agree, they referred the question to the arbitration of Sir Samuel, who pacified both parties by the felicitous suggestion that perhaps it was his uncle! They set to work at once with willing vigour to cut up the ill-treated hippopotamus, which proved to be as fat as butter, and made most excellent soup. Continuing their “up-river” course, the voyagers came to the country of the Kegtah tribe. Such savages as they saw were equally uncivilized and emaciated. The young women wore no clothing, except a small piece of dressed hide across the shoulders; the men, instead of the hide, assumed a leopard-skin. There was greater appearance of intelligence in the termites, or white ant, than in these poor half-starved wretches. The white-ant hills here rise like castle-towers above the water of the marshes. Their inmates build them ten feet high in the dry season, and when the rains come, live high and dry in the upper stories. Humanity, meanwhile, sickens in the stagnant swamp, and lingers out a miserable existence. The Bohr and Aliab tribes are a degree higher in the scale of civilization, but the Shir go beyond them. They are armed with well-made ebony clubs, two lances, a bow and arrows; they carry upon their backs a neatly made miniature stool, along with an immense pipe. The females are not absolutely naked; they wear small lappets of tanned leather as broad as the hand; at the back of the belt which supports this apron is a tail, depending to the lower portions of the thighs—a tail of finely cut strips of leather, which has probably given rise to the Arab report that a tribe in Central Africa had tails like horses. The huts here, and all along the Nile, are circular, with entrances so low that the inmates creep in and out on hands and knees. The men decorate their heads with tufts of cock’s feathers; their favourite attitude, when standing, is on one leg, while leaning on a spear, the uplifted leg reposing on the inside of the other knee.