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Grey River Argus, Volume X, Issue 794, 11 February 1871, Page 3

The novel sight of a hippopotamus swimming about in the Seine at Paris was witnessed the other day with almost as much alarm as wonder, by hundreds of people on the river, in the neighborhood of the Pont d'Ansterlitz. The drought has so reduced the water supply in the cisterns of the Jardin desPlantes, that for some days past the hippopotamus has not been able to take his bath in the gardens. His keeper takes him on a low waggon drawn by two horses to the bank of the Seine, and lets him go into the river as far as the length of a strong iron chain attached to his neck will allow. The hippopotamus grew so strong upon his healthy swimming that h$ broke his chain, struck out, got into the middle of the stream, and produced a tremendous panic among the boats, which his whalelike bulk threatened to upset. In his frolic he lifted his nose to the height of the paddle-box of a steamer, and set all the passengers screaming; his approach cleared in a jiffey a washerwoman's barge and the Austerlitz bathing establishment. Half-a-hundred small boats went in pursuit of him. Several keepers succeeded in getting on his back, but he got rid of them by plunging. After a long and exciting hunt, one of the keepers got hold of a link of the broken chain which remained attached to his neck, slipped a strong rope through it, and then got sufficient assistance to haul him ashore.