g more than they did themselves.

The hippopotami are more wary here than higher up, as the natives hunt
them with guns. Having shot one on a shallow sandbank, our men undertook
to bring it over to the left bank, in order to cut it up with greater
ease. It was a fine fat one, and all rejoiced in the hope of eating the
fat for butter, with our hard dry cakes of native meal. Our cook was
sent over to cut a choice piece for dinner, but returned with the
astonishing intelligence that the carcass was gone. They had been
hoodwinked, and were very much ashamed of themselves. A number of Banyai
came to assist in rolling it ashore, and asserted that it was all shallow
water. They rolled it over and over towards the land, and, finding the
rope we had made fast to it, as they said, an encumbrance, it was
unloosed. All were shouting and talking as loud as they could bawl, when
suddenly our expected feast plumped into a deep hole, as the Banyai
intended it should do. When sinking, all the Makololo jumped in after
it. One caught frantically at the tail; another grasped a foot; a third
seized the hip; "but, by Sebituane, it would go down in spite of all that
we could do." Instead of a fat hippopotamus we had only a lean fowl for
dinner, and were glad enough to get even that. The hippopotamus,
however, floated during the night, and was found about a mile below. The
Banyai then assembled on the bank, and disputed our right to the beast:
"It might have been shot by somebody else." Our men took a little of it
and then left it, rather than come into collision with them.

A fine waterbuck was shot in the Kakolole narrows, at Mount Manyerere; it
dropped beside the creek where it was feeding; an enormous crocodile,
that had been watching it at the moment, seized and dragged it into the
water, which was not very deep. The mortally wounded animal made a
desperate plunge, and hauling the crocodile several yards tore itself out
of the hideous jaws. To escape the hunter, the waterbuck jumped into the
river, and was swimming across, when another crocodile gave chase, but a
ball soon sent it to the bottom. The waterbuck swam a little longer, the
fine head dropped, the body turned over, and one of the canoes dragged it
ashore. Below Kakolole, and still at the base of Manyerere mountain,
several coal-seams, not noticed on our ascent, were now seen to crop out
on the right bank of the Zambesi.

Chitora, of Chicova, treated us with his