the river, where they had been to drink. Their trunks were full
of water, and they tossed them up, spouting the water like a fine
shower-bath over their hot heads and backs, and now, cooled and
refreshed, began to eat the silvery leaves of the bushes. Then the
hunters threw their spears thick and fast; after two hours, the great
creature lay still upon the ground,--she was dead.

So day after day they had hunted, loading the canoes with ivory, and
sailing far up the river; far up where the tall rushes wave, twisted
together by the twining morning-glory vines; far up where the
alligators make great nests in the river-bank, and lay their eggs,
and stretch themselves in the sunshine, half asleep inside their scaly
armor; far up where the hippopotamus is standing in his drowsy dream
on the bottom of the river, with the water covering him, head and all.
He is a great, sleepy fellow, not unlike a very large, dark-brown pig,
with a thick skin and no hair. Here he lives under the water all day,
only once in a while poking up his nose for a breath of fresh air. And
here is the mother-hippopotamus, with her baby standing upon her neck,
that he may be nearer the top of the water. Think how funny he must
look.

All day long they stand here under the water, half asleep, sometimes
giving a loud grunt or snore, and sometimes, I am sorry to say,
tipping over a canoe which happens to float over their heads. But at
night, when men are asleep, the great beasts come up out of the river
and eat the short, sweet grass upon the shore, and look about to see
the world a little. Oh, what mighty beasts! Men are so small and weak
beside them. And yet, because the mind of man is so much above theirs,
he can rule them; for God made man to be king of the whole earth, and
greater than all.