instead, they proposed our going vid Tangata, a much
longer route, but open to us if we only took a sufficient
number of men, and paid handsomely for the convenience.
Considering that the value attachable to the
undertaking would be magnified in our minds in proportion
to the amount of obstacles which had to be surmounted,
difficulty upon difficulty was now conjured
up and produced as fast as they thought they were
working upon our inclinations. Sometimes our advisers
would go, and then the opposite. They were
verily as coy in their advancements and retractions as
a woman who, in love, gives and takes with a wavering
man on whom she has set her heart at a time when he
is fearful of giving way to her little seductive artifices.
At this perplexing juncture, quite unforeseen by us,
the jemadar of a small Beluch garrison (Chogu4),
about seven miles up the river, came to pay his
respects, and by a clever artifice—purely an Oriental
dodge, as anybody who has lived in India will
readily admit—at once perceiving an advantage to
be gained by which he might profitably fill his own
pocket at the same time that he would save ours, and
give a job to his own Beluches to the prejudice of
those avaricious Panganyites, offered us an inducement
which was too good not to be at once accepted.
The plan was simply this : He was to leave
at once and return to Chogue, and make arrangements
with his guard for our reception there, whilst
we, feigning abandonment of all our plans, were to
prepare for a shooting excursion up the river, with
only one servant and our sporting gear with us. This
trick succeeded admirably, without provoking the
slightest suspicion on anybody’s part. Leaving our
Sheikh and one “ boy” behind to take care of our
property, we now set sail in a small canoe, on the 6th
February, and made for Chogue. The river was extremely
tortuous and filled with hippopotami, who, as
the vessel advanced up the tidal stream, snorted and
grunted as if they felt disposed to dispute our passage
; but this never happened. Inquisitive in the
extreme about the foreign intruders, they could not
resist continually popping up their heads and apparently
inviting us to take a shot, which, as may readily
be imagined, I lost no opportunity in complying with.
Whether I killed any or not is difficult to say, for
as the guns were fired their heads immediately disappeared,
to rise no more, or, if not struck, to peep
above again some way distant at our stern. To shoot
hippopotami properly, one must have time to wait for
the receding of the tide, when, if killed, their bodies
would be left exposed on the sandy bottom; or, if in
deep water, to wait until, being filled with gases, they
would float by the buoyancy of their bodies.
There was little to be seen in this voyage of any interest,
for the curtains of mangroves, with palms and
other trees growing in almost impenetrable denseness,
veiled in our view to the limits of the stream’s breadth.
As the tide was running out at sunset, we baited for
its return at Pombui, a small village on the left bank,
and resumed the journey after midnight. In two