, wrecking ships and destroying
cocoa-nuts, carafu, and all fruits: happened five days after Seyed
Burghash's return from Mecca.

At the Loangwa of Zumbo we came to a party of hereditary hippopotamus
hunters, called Makembwe or Akombwe. They follow no other occupation,
but when their game is getting scanty at one spot they remove to some
other part of the Loangwa, Zambesi, or Shire, and build temporary huts
on an island, where their women cultivate patches: the flesh of the
animals they kill is eagerly exchanged by the more settled people for
grain. They are not stingy, and are everywhere welcome guests. I never
heard of any fraud in dealing, or that they had been guilty of an
outrage on the poorest: their chief characteristic is their courage.
Their hunting is the bravest thing I ever saw. Each canoe is manned by
two men; they are long light craft, scarcely half an inch in thickness,
about eighteen inches beam, and from eighteen to twenty feet long. They
are formed for speed, and shaped somewhat like our racing boats. Each
man uses a broad short paddle, and as they guide the canoe slowly down
stream to a sleeping hippopotamus not a single ripple is raised on the
smooth water; they look as if holding in their breath, and communicate
by signs only. As they come near the prey the harpooner in the bow lays
down his paddle and rises slowly up, and there he stands erect,
motionless, and eager, with the long-handled weapon poised at arm's
length above his head, till coming close to the beast he plunges it with
all his might in towards the heart. During this exciting feat he has to
keep his balance exactly. His neighbour in the stern at once backs his
paddle, the harpooner sits down, seizes his paddle, and backs too to
escape: the animal surprised and wounded seldom returns the attack at
this stage of the hunt. The next stage, however, is full of danger.

The barbed blade of the harpoon is secured by a long and very strong
rope wound round the handle: it is intended to come out of its socket,
and while the iron head is firmly fixed in the animal's body the rope
unwinds and the handle floats on the surface. The hunter next goes to
the handle and hauls on the rope till he knows that he is right over the
beast: when he feels the line suddenly slacken he is prepared to deliver
another harpoon the instant that hippo.'s enormous jaws appear with a
terrible grunt above the water. The backing by the paddles is again
repeated, but hip