At 10 p.m. we decide to take the big iron boat of the steamer and go hunting.  The natives are exceedingly skilful and know all the likely places for hippo.  They first paddle hard up stream and having arrived at the hunting 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 wheels experienced in dragging away, so to speak, the water from under the ship when there was little depth.  Still the ships, frequently run on the banks, but as they are flat bottomed, are not usually injured.  The method of mooring is very rudimentary although practical.  One of the crew jumps overboard with a steel rope, swims ashore and makes it fast to a tree.  All of them are expert swimmers and seem to enjoy their frequent dips, and as their clothes consist of a loin cloth only, they do not require to undress.