196 TROPHIES, they would cut up the remainder into strips, with which they festooned all the trees ; this, when dried, was placed in skins, and afterwards cooked and eaten from time to time. The fat, when boiled down, formed a most excellent substitute for cooking-butter, which we were very glad to get, as the only butter we could obtain in the country possessed a most disgusting taste, principally owing to the fact of its being kept in badly cured goat-skins.

Then, too, the hide is most highly prized throughout the Soudan for the purpose of making the koorbatch, or native whip, of which we were told one skin, if carefully divided, would make upwards of two hundred. This statement, however, must be taken aim grano, as we never put it to the test. The hide, on the neck of a fine bull, is fully an inch and a half in thickness. Altogether, you cannot please your Arabs more than by shooting one of these useful animals.

The tusks are often very fine, and were at one time extensively used by dentists, in the manufacture of false teeth. I believe, however, that they have been superseded by the use of some composition. They make very nice trophies, and can be made up in various ways. At home we had some made into frames for mirrors, and they looked very well.

The natives secure these animals by means of harpoons, of which Sir Samuel ]3aker gives a most interesting account in *'The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia," a book that served us as a sort of guide-book, and which we found contained a most accurate description of the country.

Owing to the comparative ease with which hippototami can be killed, they are rapidly becoming exterminated in this part of Africa. They are no longer found on the Nile farther north than the nineteenth degree of north latitude, and are nowhere plentiful north of Khartoum. Where there is cultiva-