the dreadful peals of thunder which rattled over their heads, and by
the awful darkness which prevailed, broken at intervals by flashes of
lightning, whose powerful glare was truly awful. Our people told us,
that these formidable animals frequently upset canoes in the river,
when every one in them was sure to perish. These came so close to us,
that we could reach them with the butt-end of a gun. When I fired
at the first, which I must have hit, every one of them came to the
surface of the water, and pursued us so fast over to the north bank,
that it was with the greatest difficulty imaginable we could keep
before them. Having fired a second time, the report of my gun was
followed by a loud roaring noise, and we seemed to increase our
distance from them. There were two Bornou men among our crew who were
not so frightened as the rest, having seen some of these creatures
before on Lake Tchad, where, they say, there are plenty of them.
However, the terrible hippopotami did us no kind of mischief whatever;
they were only sporting and wallowing in the river for their own
amusement, no doubt, at first when we interrupted them; but had they
upset our canoe, we should have paid dearly for it. We observed a bank
on the north side of the river shortly after this, and I proposed
halting on it for the night, for I wished much to put my foot on firm
land again. This, however, not one of the crew would consent to,
saying, that if the Gewo Roua, or water elephant, did not kill them,
the crocodiles certainly would do so before the morning, and I thought
afterwards that we might have been carried off like the Cumbrie people
on the islands near Yaoorie, if we had tried the experiment. Our canoe
was only large enough to hold us all when sitting, so that we had no
chance of lying down. Had we been able to muster up thirty thousand
cowries at Rabba, we might have purchased one which would have carried
us all very comfortably. A canoe of this sort would have served us for
living in entirely, we should have had no occasion to land excepting