SCENE ON THE SEINE.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 777, 16 February 1871, Page 3

SCENE ON THE SEINE.

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 Point d'Austerlitz. The drought has so reduced the water supply in the cisterns of the Jardin des Plantes, 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 the liver 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 he broke his chain, struck out, got into the middle of the stream, and produced a tremendous panic among the boats, which his whale like 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-hun-dred 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.