Early in the morning I procured an Arab guide to search for the
reported hippopotami. My tents were among a grove of dome palms
on the margin of the river; thus I had a clear view of the bed
for a distance of about half a mile on either side. This portion
of the Atbara was about 500 yards in width, the banks were about
thirty feet perpendicular depth; and the bend of the river had
caused the formation of the deep hollow on the opposite side
which now formed the pool, while every other part was dry. This
pool occupied about one-third the breadth of the river, bounded
by the sand upon one side, and by a perpendicular cliff upon the
other, upon which grew a fringe of green bushes similar to
willows. These were the only succulent leaves that I had seen
since I left Berber.
We descended the steep sandy bank in a spot that the Arabs had
broken down to reach the water, and after trudging across about
400 yards of deep sand, we reached the extreme and narrowest end
of the pool; here for the first time I saw the peculiar four-toed
print of the hippopotamus's foot. A bed of melons had been
planted here by the Arabs in the moist sand near the water, but
the fruit had been entirely robbed by the hippopotami.
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