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Lot Essay
In Chapter I, Leigh describes his perceptions of Akeley when they first met, 'He impressed me at once as a man who had done a tremendous amount of labour, mental and physical. I judged him to be about sixty-five years old. He was neither tall nor short, slight nor heavy. He was stooped, graying, but had something dynamic and reassuring about him that made me like and trust him.' (W.R. Leigh, Frontiers of Enchantment, London, 1939, p. 16).
Chapter XX is entitled Night with an African Shepherd and begins with Leigh's encounter with a hippopotamus, 'Just as I reached the water's edge a tremendous splashing startled me, and an immense Hippopotamus stood within thirty feet of me. He had been lying in the shallow water where a few cat-tails grew; I, with my attention fixed on the shoreline and hills, had not seen him; he, asleep, had not seen me until I got very close. I jerked my rifle into position, and there we stood, each staring at the other. The animal, after a hasty but careful survey of me, decided I was an unneighbourly interloper, and, with snorts of suspicion and disgust, moved out into deep water.' (op. cit., p. 219).
Chapter XX is entitled Night with an African Shepherd and begins with Leigh's encounter with a hippopotamus, 'Just as I reached the water's edge a tremendous splashing startled me, and an immense Hippopotamus stood within thirty feet of me. He had been lying in the shallow water where a few cat-tails grew; I, with my attention fixed on the shoreline and hills, had not seen him; he, asleep, had not seen me until I got very close. I jerked my rifle into position, and there we stood, each staring at the other. The animal, after a hasty but careful survey of me, decided I was an unneighbourly interloper, and, with snorts of suspicion and disgust, moved out into deep water.' (op. cit., p. 219).