The river was a tidal one, of no great breadth, and the margin was covered by a thick growth of the mangrove shrub, on the boughs of which the sharp-edged shells of the tree-oyster stuck in strings and clusters in great numbers. The best time to catch the hippopotamus is when the tide is out and the banks are bared, for then you find him wallowing in the mud or basking on the sand (when there is any), like jungle-hog, and with a well-directed shot on the ear, or anywhere about the brain-pan, you have a good chance of securing him. I especially mention this, as it is quite labour in vain, in places where the water is deep, to fire at these animals, unless you can kill them outright, as they dive under like a water-rat, and are never seen more if they are only wounded. I, like most raw hands at this particular kind of sport, began in a very different way from what, I think, a more experienced hunter would have done, by chasing them in the water, and firing at their heads whenever they appeared above it; and even fired slugs about their eyes and ears, in hopes that I might irritate them sufficiently to make them charge the canoe. This teasing proved pretty successful; for when the tide had run clean out, only pools and reaches, connecting by shallow runnels the volume of the natural stream, remained for the hippopotami to sport about in; and my manoeuvring in these confined places became so irritating, that a large female came rapidly under water to the stern of the canoe, and gave it such a sudden and violent cant with her head or withers, that that end of the vessel shot up in the air, and sent me sprawling on my back, with my legs forced up by the seat--a bar of wood--at right angles to my body; whilst the poler and the big double gun were driven like a pair of shuttlecocks, flying right and left of the canoe high up into the air. The gun on one side fell plump into the middle of the stream, and the man on the other dropped, _post_ first, on to the hippopotamus's back, but rapidly scrambled back into the canoe. The hippopotamus then, as is these animals' wont, renewed the attack, but I was ready to receive her, and as she came rolling porpoise-fashion close by the side of the canoe, I fired a quarter of a pound of lead, backed by four drams of powder, into the middle of her back, the muzzle of the rifle almost touching it. She then sank, and I never saw her more; but the gun (after lying on the sandy bottom the whole of that night), I managed, by the aid of several divers, to find on the following day.