At the Loangwa of Zumbo we came to a party of hereditary hippopotamus hunters, called Makembwe or Akombwe.  They follow no other occupation, but when their game is getting scanty at one spot they remove to some other part of the Loangwa, Zambesi, or Shire, and build temporary huts on an island, where their women cultivate patches:  the flesh of the animals they kill is eagerly exchanged by the more settled people for grain.  They are not stingy, and are everywhere welcome guests.  I never heard of any fraud in dealing, or that they had been guilty of an outrage on the poorest:  their chief characteristic is their courage.  Their hunting is the bravest thing I ever saw.  Each canoe is manned by two men; they are long light craft, scarcely half an inch in thickness, about eighteen inches beam, and from eighteen to twenty feet long.  They are formed for speed, and shaped somewhat like our racing boats.  Each man uses a broad short paddle, and as they guide the canoe slowly down stream to a sleeping hippopotamus not a single ripple is raised on the smooth water; they look as if holding in their breath, and communicate by signs only.  As they come near the prey the harpooner in the bow lays down his paddle and rises slowly up, and there he stands erect, motionless, and eager, with the long-handled weapon poised at arm’s length above his head, till coming close to the beast he plunges it with all his might in towards the heart.  During this exciting feat he has to keep his balance exactly.  His neighbour in the stern at once backs his paddle, the harpooner sits down, seizes his paddle, and backs too to escape:  the animal surprised and wounded seldom returns the attack at this stage of the hunt.  The next stage, however, is full of danger.

The barbed blade of the harpoon is secured by a long and very strong rope wound round the handle:  it is intended to come out of its socket, and while the iron head is firmly fixed in the animal’s body the rope unwinds and the handle floats on the surface.  The hunter next goes to the handle and hauls on the rope till he knows that he is right over the beast:  when he feels the line suddenly slacken he is prepared to deliver another harpoon the instant that hippo.’s enormous jaws appear with a terrible grunt above the water.  The backing by the paddles is again repeated, but hippo. often assaults the canoe, crunches it with his great jaws as easily as a pig would a bunch of asparagus, or shivers it with a kick by his hind foot.  Deprived of their canoe the gallant comrades instantly dive and swim to the shore under water:  they say that the infuriated beast looks for them on the surface, and being below they escape his sight.  When caught by many harpoons the crews of several canoes seize the handles and drag him hither and thither till, weakened by loss of blood, he succumbs.