“There were four of them, three cows and an old bull; they stood in the middle of the river, and though alarmed, did not appear aware of the extent of the impending danger.  I took the sea-cow next me, and with my first ball I gave her a mortal wound, knocking loose a great plate on the top of her skull.  She at once commenced plunging round and round, and then occasionally remained still, sitting for a few minutes on the same spot.  On hearing the report of my rifle two of the others took up stream, and the fourth dashed down the river; they trotted along, like oxen, at a smart pace as long as the water was shallow.  I was now in a state of very great anxiety about my wounded sea-cow, for I feared that she would get down into deep water, and be lost like the last one; her struggles were still carrying her down stream, and the water was becoming deeper.  To settle the matter I accordingly fired a second shot from the bank, which, entering the roof of her skull, passed out through her eye; she then, kept continually splashing round and round in a circle in the middle of the river.  I had great fears of the crocodiles, and I did not know that the sea-cow might not attack me.  My anxiety to secure her, however, overcame all hesitation; so, divesting myself of my leathers, and armed with a sharp knife.  I dashed into the water, which at first took me up to my arm-pits, but in the middle was shallower.  As I approached Behemoth her eye looked very wicked.  I halted for a moment, ready to dive under the water if she attacked me, but she was stunned, and did not know what she was doing; so, running in upon her, and seizing her short tail, I attempted to incline her course to land.  It was extraordinary what enormous strength she still had in the water.  I could not guide her in the slightest, and she continued to splash, and plunge, and blow, and make her circular course, carrying me along with her as if I was a fly on her tail.  Finding her tail gave me but a poor hold, as the only means of securing my prey, I took out my knife, and cutting two deep parallel incisions through the skin on her rump, and lifting this skin from the flesh, so that I could get in my two hands, I made use of this as a handle; and after some desperate hard work, sometimes pushing and sometimes pulling, the sea-cow continuing her circular course all the time and I holding on at her rump like grim Death, eventually I succeeded in bringing this gigantic and most powerful animal to the bank.  Here the Bushman, quickly brought me a stout buffalo-rheim from my horse’s neck, which I passed through the opening in the thick skin, and moored Behemoth to a tree.  I then took my rifle, and sent a ball through the center of her head, and she was numbered with the dead.”  There is nothing in “Waterton’s Wanderings,” or in the “Adventures of Baron Munchausen” more startling than this “Waltz with a Hippopotamus!”

In the all-wise disposition of events, it is perhaps ordained that wild animals should be subdued by man to his use at the expense of such tortures as those described in the work before us.  Mere amusement, therefore, is too light a motive for dealing such wounds and death Mr. Cumming owns to; but he had other motives,—­besides a considerable profit he has reaped in trophies, ivory, fur, &c., he has made in his book some valuable contributions to the natural history of the animals he wounded and slew.