220 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



The Tomi is a pretty little river and like no other that 

 we had seen in Africa, except the Nunna, which has very 

 much the same character. At Krebeje it is no more than 

 fifteen yards wide. The country on either side is open, 

 but thick belts of trees clothe the banks, hiding the view, 

 and the little stream winds very sinuously like a leafy 

 labyrinth under an arch of twisty boughs and coiling 

 creepers that meet overhead. On the third day we had 

 travelled about sixty miles. Here the river increases to a 

 width of forty yards, holding a straight course with stretches 

 sometimes of eight hundred yards, where the belts of growth 

 widen and assume a more luxuriant and tropical nature. 

 In places there are reefs and rocks that require careful navi- 

 gation. Native canoes that carry rubber ply between 

 Krebeje and the mouth, but for boats the size of ours the 

 river is hardly navigable ; snags hidden in the water, low 

 branches overhead, and often a tree fallen right across the 

 stream, make the descent dangerous. We reached Kemmo, 

 a small French post, on the fourth day, and found Gosling 

 waiting for us. He had been elephant-hunting and had 

 killed his fourth and last elephant. The French were 

 extremely kind to us in regard to our shooting, having waived 

 the payment of licences. 



For the last year, except on the return journey down the 

 Bamingi when we travelled with the stream at a rate of three 

 miles an hour, we had been poling against the current the 

 whole way, climbing laboriously up the rivers, often not 

 making more than a mile an hour. But now the poles were 

 put away, and we slipped down the broadening river at the 

 rate of seven miles. As we came within sight of the great 



