Next Day One Of The Men Crawled Over
The Black Rocks To Within Ten Yards Of A Sleeping Hippopotamus, And
Shot Him Through The Brain.
The weather being warm, the body floated
in a few hours, and some of us had our first trial of hippopotamus
flesh.
It is a cross-grained meat, something between pork and beef,-
-pretty good food when one is hungry and can get nothing better.
When we reached the foot of the mountain named Chipereziwa, whose
perpendicular rocky sides are clothed with many-coloured lichens, our
Portuguese companion informed us there were no more obstructions to
navigation, the river being all smooth above; he had hunted there and
knew it well. Supposing that the object of our trip was accomplished
we turned back; but two natives, who came to our camp at night,
assured us that a cataract, called Morumbwa, did still exist in
front. Drs. Livingstone and Kirk then decided to go forward with
three Makololo and settle the question for themselves. It was as
tough a bit of travel as they ever had in Africa, and after some
painful marching the Badema guides refused to go further; "the
Banyai," they said, "would be angry if they showed white men the
country; and there was besides no practicable approach to the spot,
neither elephant, nor hippopotamus, nor even a crocodile could reach
the cataract." The slopes of the mountains on each side of the
river, now not 300 yards wide, and without the flattish flood-channel
and groove, were more than 3000 feet from the sky-line down, and were
covered either with dense thornbush or huge black boulders; this deep
trough-like shape caused the sun's rays to converge as into a focus,
making the surface so hot that the soles of the feet of the Makololo
became blistered.
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