224 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

ering fire, like brands which are soft white ashes on the out.

side, but living coals within.

On the same day I saw the first hippopotamus. The men discerned him about a quarter of a mile off, as he came up to breathe, and called my attention to him. Our vessel was run towards him, and the sailors shouted, to draw his attention : " How is your wife, old boy ?" " Is your son married yet ?" and other like exclamations. They insisted upon it that his curiosity would be excited by this means, and he would allow us to approach. I saw him at last within a hundred yards, but only the enormous head, which was more than three feet in breadth across the ears. He raised it with a tremendous snort, opening his huge mouth at the same time, and I thought I had never seen a more frightful-looking monster. He came up in our wake, after we had passed, and followed us for some time.

Directly afterwards we spied five crocodiles on a sand-bank.

One of them was of a grayish-yellow color, and upward of twenty feet in length. We approached quietly to within a few yards of them, when my men raised their poles and shouted.

The beasts started from their sleep and dashed quickly into the water, the big yellow one striking so violently against our hull, that I am sure he went off with a head-ache. The natives have many superstitions concerning the hippopotamus, and related to me some astonishing examples of his cunning and sagacity. Among others, they asserted that an Arab woman, at Abou-Hammed, went down to the river to wash some clothes, once upon a time. She laid the garments upon some smooth stones, and was engaged in trampling them with her feet, when a huge hippopotamus thrust his head out of the river, and after watching her for some time, made for the shore. The woman