HIPPOPOTAMI AT HOME 235 Here on board we saw Adam with his first looking-glass—the ingenu, the primeval, the crude and unsophisticated ! All emotions were exhibited with the frank delight of a maiden at her first ball, and face, attitudes, and ejaculations, demonstrated astonishment and intense self-admiration on the part of a veritable Caliban among Nuers. A negro in front of him, barbarian enough in English eyes, devoted himself, as an unparalleled amusement and recreation, to the instruction of the less tutored savage. His superiority was enormous, his delight and self-conceit unbounded ; laughing at the pleasure of the Nuer as he scrutinized the reflection of his somewhat aquiline features, he rolled over with unrestrainable merriment when Adam, on turning to the other side of the looking-glass and expecting to see his own back, looked blank with amazed disappointment.

For harmless occupation and amusement, involving no danger to either party save in the highly unlikely event of success, recreation may take the form of chasing hippopotami in a steamer, always providing that the hippo take the course which the steamer would have pursued were it absent. Narrow though the river be, it has on either side of it grass ramparts which grow in deep water. Among these coarse grass-stems the hippos form their tunnel-like retreats, and the rush for these disturbs the water so much that their course may often be easily observed. Their great heads are all that is seen on first meeting, or, in shallow water,