Once, what I thought was a spit of rocks suddenly tumbled apart and
became twenty hippos, piled more or less on top of each other.
During that one day, as they floated with the current, enjoying
their afternoon's nap, we saw thirty-four. They impressed me as the
most idle, and, therefore, the most aristocratic of animals. They
toil not, neither do they spin; they had nothing to do but float in
the warm water and the bright sunshine; their only effort was to
open their enormous jaws and yawn luxuriously, in the pure content
of living, in absolute boredom. They reminded you only of fat gouty
old gentlemen, puffing and blowing in the pool at the Warm Springs.
The next chance we had at one of them on shore came on our first
evening in the Kasai just before sunset. Captain Jensen was steering
for a flat island of sand and grass where he meant to tie up for the
night. About fifty yards from the spot for which we were making, was
the only tree on the island, and under it with his back to us, and
leisurely eating the leaves of the lower branches, exactly as though
he were waiting for us by appointment, was a big gray hippo. His
back being toward us, we could not aim at his head, and he could not
see us. But the _Deliverance_ is not noiseless, and, hearing the
paddle-wheel, the hippo turned, saw us, and bolted for the river.
The hippopotamus is as much at home in the water as the seal. To get
to the water, if he is surprised out of it, and to get under it, if
he is alarmed while in it, is instinct.
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