ground allow the boat to drift down with the current in
perfect silence. It is clear moonlight, but it is necessary to cover the
fore sight of the rifle with white paper in order to see it clearly.
After a time, up rises a great head with a great pant and there is just
time for a shot before it sinks again. Hippos frequent shallow water and
are indifferent swimmers. They walk about on the bottom and rise at
intervals to breathe. It is thus impossible to know in which direction a
beast will next appear or whether he will come up under the boat and
capsize it. This night there were great numbers and we had excellent
sport. One shot in the head is sufficient to kill a hippo which then
sinks and the body does not rise again for some hours. One unfortunate
animal was however, shot in the back and rearing straight up on his hind
legs rushed for some yards in that attitude until a second shot in the
head put him out of his misery.

Next day we reach Lukolela, a Wood Post and telegraph station. The line
runs along the bank all the way from Leopoldville to Coquilhatville and
was very difficult to erect. A space had to be cleared in the forest
nearly two hundred feet wide and the line erected in the centre on iron
posts, so that any falling trees would not destroy it. At first, the
elephants strongly resented these novel posts and frequently knocked
them down as easily as if they had been nine pins, but have since become
used to them. At Lukolela there is excellent teak wood which is
fashioned into doors and windows and shipped to various places ready for
building. The nights are quite cool, although we are near the Equator
and the heat in the day time is not nearly as oppressive as it is at
Aden or Shanghai in the summer. Cultivation is much more advanced here
than in the lower Congo and the physique of the natives is remarkably
fine.

The navigation of the river here becomes very difficult, for the water
is shallow at this season of the year and there are many sand banks
which frequently change their position. Charts are therefore,
practically useless and each skipper has to feel his way each voyage.
Indeed, the whole time two boys sit on the bows of the vessel with long
poles sounding the water and shouting out the depth. It is curious that
when the vessel is travelling in shallow water, the engines at once go
slow of their own accord. One of the engineers explained that this
phenomena was produced by the difficulty the wheel