But, you never see a hippopotamus chained to a road-roller, or
riding a bicycle. He is still the gentleman, the man of elegant
leisure, the aristocrat of aristocrats, harming no one, and, in his
ancestral river, living the simple life.
And yet, I sought to kill him. At least, one of him, but only one.
And, that I did not kill even one, while a bitter disappointment, is
still a source of satisfaction.
In the Congo River we saw only two hippos, and both of them were
dead. They had been shot from a steamer. If the hippo is killed in
the water, it is impossible to recover the body at once. It sinks
and does not rise, some say, for an hour, others say for seven
hours. As in an hour the current may have carried the body four
miles below where it sank, the steamer does not wait, and the
destruction of the big beast is simple murder. There should be a law
in the Congo to prevent their destruction, and, no doubt, if the
State thought it could make a few francs out of protecting the
hippo, as it makes many million francs by preserving the elephant,
which it does for the ivory, such a law would exist. We soon saw
many hippos, but although we could not persuade the only other
passenger not to fire at them, there are a few hippos still alive in
the Congo. For, the only time the Captain and I were positive he
hit anything, was when he fired over our heads and blew off the roof
of the bridge.
When first we saw the two dead hippos, one of them was turning and
twisting so violently that we thought he was alive.
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