Africa, in all its provinces, is the scene of the boldest field sports in
the world--India and its tigers, perhaps, excepted. But Africa excels even
India in the variety and multitude of its mighty savages--lions, elephants,
panthers, and hippopotami; the sands, the forests, the jungles, the rivers,
the marshes, every thing and place abounds with brute life, on the largest,
the boldest, and the fiercest scale. Africa, with the human race on the
lowest grade, has the brute on the highest, and its true name is the great
kingdom of savage nature.

A two-ounce ball had been lodged in the forehead of hippopotamus on the
evening of reaching the Hawash; but the animal having dived, the natives,
in some jealousy of the skill of the British rifle, declared that it had
not been mortally struck. The next dawn, however, decided the question,
for the "freckled pink sides of a dead hippopotamus were to be seen high
above the surface, as the distended carcass floated like a monstrous buoy
at anchor." Hawsers were carried out with all diligence, and the "colossus"
was towed ashore amidst the acclamations of the whole caravan. Then came a
native scene. A tribe of savages, who had waited, squatting, to see the
arrival of the monster, threw aside their bows and arrows, and, stripping
its thick hide from the ribs, attacked it with the vigour of an African
horde. Donkeys and women were laden with incredible despatch, and,
"staggering under huge flaps of meat," the savages went their way.

The soil now became swampy, yet only the more filled with animal existence.
LE ADO, (the White Water,) a lake which they skirted, of two miles'
diameter, was the haunt of countless wild-fowl, geese, mallards, teal,
herons, flamingoes. A party of Bedouin women deposed to having seen
another "party" of elephants taking a bath in the spot half an hour before,
and the prints of their huge feet in the moist sands corroborated the
testimony. Hideously withered women followed the march of the mission,
carrying curds, and covered over with marsh-flies. Above, vast flights of
locusts, which had stripped the coast, were pouring in towards Abyssinia.
"They quite darkened the air" where the caravan halted; and above them
again were a host of adjutant birds, sometimes bursting down through the
mass, and then stooping to the ground, and stalking along to devour the
killed and wounded. This is the land, too, of the hurricane. Nature is
queen or tyrant here; the thunder te