HUNTING THE OKAPI 255 



is deposited. With boiling it becomes like tar, and when 

 cooled is very hard. As the splits became larger and more 

 numerous a great quantity was required, so we never missed 

 an opportunity of getting the natives to collect it. 



We also made an alteration in the boat-sections, changing 

 the second — that is the bow sections — with the corresponding 

 ones in the sterns, for we found the bow sections always had 

 to bear the brunt of the blows from the rocks. For this 

 reason, if I ever had occasion to use such boats again under 

 similar circumstances, I should have the shoulders of the 

 bow sections doubled in thickness. 



On January 15, without further mishap, we reached 

 Djabbir, a Belgian post where much rubber and palm oil is 

 collected. It was here that we lost one of our Kotoko 

 polers who had joined us at Fort Lamy. He had been 

 seized with paralysis some weeks before, and we carried him on 

 in the boat. Finally his lungs became involved, and we were 

 obliged to leave him in the station, where he afterwards died. 



In another two days we were toiling up the river again 

 to Angu. This part of the river is not much better, though a 

 few navigable reaches of four to six miles are sometimes met 

 with, where the current is not more than two miles an hour. 

 The most dangerous rapids are the Kenga, about ten miles 

 below Angu. The river is at its lowest in February and highest 

 in July. Navigation is made more difficult by the great 

 width, which varies from three-quarters of a mile to a mile, 

 and the water comes down by many channels forming a 

 number of islands. In these places the river flows over a 

 rock-strewn bed, and much damage was done to the boats 

 by the hidden boulders. 



