Banyai intended it should do.  When sinking, all the Makololo jumped in after it.  One caught frantically at the tail; another grasped a foot; a third seized the hip; “but, by Sebituane, it would go down in spite of all that we could do.”  Instead of a fat hippopotamus we had only a lean fowl for dinner, and were glad enough to get even that.  The hippopotamus, however, floated during the night, and was found about a mile below.  The Banyai then assembled on the bank, and disputed our right to the beast:  “It might have been shot by somebody else.”  Our men took a little of it and then left it, rather than come into collision with them.

A fine waterbuck was shot in the Kakolole narrows, at Mount Manyerere; it dropped beside the creek where it was feeding; an enormous crocodile, that had been watching it at the moment, seized and dragged it into the water, which was not very deep.  The mortally wounded animal made a desperate plunge, and hauling the crocodile several yards tore itself out of the hideous jaws.  To escape the hunter, the waterbuck jumped into the river, and was swimming across, when another crocodile gave chase, but a ball soon sent it to the bottom.  The waterbuck swam a little longer, the fine head dropped, the body turned over, and one of the canoes dragged it ashore.  Below Kakolole, and still at the base of Manyerere mountain, several coal-seams, not noticed on our ascent, were now seen to crop out on the right bank of the Zambesi.

Chitora, of Chicova, treated us with his former hospitality.  Our men were all much pleased with his kindness, and certainly did not look upon it as a proof of weakness.  They meant to return his friendliness when they came this way on a marauding expedition to eat the sheep of the Banyai, for insulting them in the affair of the hippopotamus; they would then send word to Chitora not to run away, for they, being his friends, would do such a good-hearted man no harm.

We entered Kebrabasa rapids, at the east end of Chicova, in the canoes, and went down a number of miles, until the river narrowed into a groove of fifty or sixty yards wide, of which we have already spoken in describing the flood-bed and channel of low water.  The navigation then became difficult and dangerous.  A fifteen feet fall of the water in our absence had developed many cataracts.  Two of our canoes passed safely down a narrow channel, which, bifurcating, had an ugly whirlpool at the rocky partition between the two branches, the deep hole in the whirls at times opening and then shutting.  The Doctor’s canoe came next, and seemed to be drifting broadside into the open vortex, in spite of the utmost exertions of the paddlers.  The rest were expecting to have to pull to the rescue; the men saying, “Look where these people are going!—­look, look!”—­when a loud crash burst on our ears.  Dr. Kirk’s canoe was dashed on a projection of the perpendicular rocks, by a sudden and mysterious boiling up of the