Bombay says that on one occasion, when coming down the Pangani river in a canoe with several other men, an irritated hippopotamus charged and upset it, upon which he and all his friends dived under water and then swam to the shore, leaving the hippopotamus to vent his rage on the shell of the canoe, which he most spitefully stuck to. This, he assures me, is the proper way to dodge a hippopotamus, and escape the danger of a bite from him. On another occasion, when I was hippopotamus-hunting in one of the boats of the Artemise, in an inlet of the sea close to Kaolé, I chased a herd of hippopotami in deep water, till one of the lot, coming as usual from below, drove a tusk clean through the boat with such force that he partially hoisted her out of the water; but the brute did no further damage, for I kept him off by making the men splash their oars rapidly whilst making for the shore, where we just arrived in time to save ourselves from sinking. The day previous to this adventure, I bagged a fine young male hippopotamus close to this spot, by hitting him on the ear when standing in shallow water. The ivory of these animals is more prized than that of the elephant, and, in consequence of the superior hardness of its enamel, it is in great requisition with the dentist. Hippopotami are found all down this coast in very great numbers, but especially in the deltas of the rivers, or up the streams themselves, and afford an easy, remunerative, and pleasant sport to any man who is not addicted to much hard exercise. The Panjani, Kingani, and Lufiji rivers are full of them, as well as all the other minor feeders to the sea along that coast. If these animals happen to be killed in places so far distant from the sea that the tidal waters have not power to draw them out to the ocean depths, their bodies will be found, when inflated with gas, after decomposition, floating on the surface of the water a day or two afterwards, and can easily be secured by the sportsman, if he be vigilant enough to take them before the hungry watchful savages come and secure them, to appease their rapacious appetites. Mussulmans will even eat these amphibious creatures without cutting their throats, looking on them as cold-blooded animals, created in the same manner as fish. The following day, 10th August, we made a halt to try our fortune again in purchasing cows, but failed as usual; so the following morning we decamped at dawn, and marched thirteen miles to our original station in Southern Néra. Here I purchased four goats for one dhoti merikani, the best bargain I ever made. Thunder had rumbled, and clouds overcast the skies for two days; and this day a delicious cooling shower fell. The people said it was the little rains--_chota barsât_, as we call it in India--expected yearly at this time, as the precursor of the later great falls.