Richard's Bay, in the heart of sunny Zululand, is not known to fame. Yet somewhere on its reedy shore there is a spot that merits a place in the mystic annals of the wild, for there began the strangest journey ever made by a denizen of the jungle lands of Africa. One white African day, when the thunders of the First World War were rumbling to silence, a 6000-pound hippopotamus clambered out of the muddy waters of the bay and stood on dry land. His big, ugly snout swung in a slow, questing arc. Then, as if drawn by some magnetic force, it stopped when it pointed south, and the stumpy legs began pounding the veldt.
Thus began a world's record marathon amble-a trip that was to cover half of Zululand, all of Natal, the whole of Pondoland and half of Cape Province. That mysterious journey was to last for no less than two and one-half years. It was to cover approximately a thousand miles of African veldt, at a languid average of a mile a day. This was not a particularly searing pace, but one easily associated with the under structure of the huge amphibian. What remote atavistic instinct stirred in that hippo's dark brain, to send him a-roaming down nearly half a continent?
And in quest of what? Wanderlust, in the broad sense, is certainly not a hippo characteristic. And that strange odvssey is without parallel a trip that intrigues the imagination. Not the least remarkable feature of that hippo's unexampled adventure into the far lands of Africa is that, once he left his native haunts, he was gradually drawing away from true hippo country, for hippos love the heat, the mud, the swamps and reedy inlets of tropical rivers and lakes. Of course, as he wandered ever farther south, he ran across rivers and lakes that offered him plenty of water, some of it just as murky and swampy as that of his home in Richard's Bay. And since a hippo can live on any kind of green stuff, even the toughest of weeds and grasses, he found plenty of provender to fill his capacious interior.
And a frosty climate is not usual in any of the provinces through which he wandered. Yet, whatever un-homelike conditions he found, he allowed them in no way to interfere with his pre-determined journey. This ambling hippo first swam into notice by crossing the Tugela, the great river that forms a flowing boundary between Zululand and Natal, South Africa's garden province. He had then put half of Zululand behind him. That fact alone was enough to attract attention to him. And it did-a casual attention, it is true, but the beginning of the fame that was soon to be his.
Thus began a world's record marathon amble-a trip that was to cover half of Zululand, all of Natal, the whole of Pondoland and half of Cape Province. That mysterious journey was to last for no less than two and one-half years. It was to cover approximately a thousand miles of African veldt, at a languid average of a mile a day. This was not a particularly searing pace, but one easily associated with the under structure of the huge amphibian. What remote atavistic instinct stirred in that hippo's dark brain, to send him a-roaming down nearly half a continent?
And in quest of what? Wanderlust, in the broad sense, is certainly not a hippo characteristic. And that strange odvssey is without parallel a trip that intrigues the imagination. Not the least remarkable feature of that hippo's unexampled adventure into the far lands of Africa is that, once he left his native haunts, he was gradually drawing away from true hippo country, for hippos love the heat, the mud, the swamps and reedy inlets of tropical rivers and lakes. Of course, as he wandered ever farther south, he ran across rivers and lakes that offered him plenty of water, some of it just as murky and swampy as that of his home in Richard's Bay. And since a hippo can live on any kind of green stuff, even the toughest of weeds and grasses, he found plenty of provender to fill his capacious interior.
And a frosty climate is not usual in any of the provinces through which he wandered. Yet, whatever un-homelike conditions he found, he allowed them in no way to interfere with his pre-determined journey. This ambling hippo first swam into notice by crossing the Tugela, the great river that forms a flowing boundary between Zululand and Natal, South Africa's garden province. He had then put half of Zululand behind him. That fact alone was enough to attract attention to him. And it did-a casual attention, it is true, but the beginning of the fame that was soon to be his.
