Lake Victoria to Khartoum 



sit down in patience and send messengers to 

 scour the country for another canoe. We made 

 a clearing in the elephant grass, camped, and 

 cursed. At about ten o'clock next morning 

 a canoe arrived ; but what a miserable one ! It 

 was so narrow that not a single box could be got 

 inside, and the paddler had to sit on the top of it 

 to wield his weapon with any hope of success, 

 thereby rendering it more top heavy and wobbly 

 than ever. We all agreed that it was unsafe ; 

 but something had to be done ; whatever we did 

 meant a real bad wetting. I stripped and lay 

 down, straddling the thing over the top, holding a 

 dog swimming in each hand, to see what would 

 happen. Raffles behaved beautifully, but Dick 

 got alarmed and upset the whole show five yards 

 from the bank, so that method of crossing was 

 impossible. Then I went across by myself, 

 lying in the bottom as ballast. Even then the 

 canoe was dreadfully wobbly, and the exertion 

 exhausted the paddler so much that it was clearly 

 absurd to suppose all the loads — as well as 

 porters — could be got over in the day. So I told 

 the man to take me over again, back to the 

 shelter of my tent and the warmth of a big fire. 

 Then we emptied four chop-boxes and lashed 

 them tightly to the sides of the canoe, two abreast, 

 so as to form a kind of outrigger to give greater 

 stability and stop the wobbling. We gave this 

 arrangement a trial trip with a heavy tent, myself, 



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