318 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



see as much as possible of the Lake before leaving, so we deter- 

 mined to lose no time, and employ the days while waiting for 

 Gosling and the other boat in making a voyage. Accordingly, 

 next morning, December 8, we made ready for a start, 

 provisioning ourselves for a five days' trip, and taking with 

 us Quasso and Lowi and the crew of six Nupe polers. And I 

 must not forget a so-called kinsman of Adamu, whom the 

 latter recommended us to take as having experience of the 

 Lake and the Budumas. When we went down to the water's 

 edge, we found it had gone back 200 yards in the night owing 

 to the dropping of the wind, and had left the boat high and 

 dry. So our start was delayed for some little time, and a 

 good deal of hard work had to be done, dragging the boat 

 across the mud to float her again. 



But before we start on this our first voyage on the Lake, 

 perhaps it would be as well to make a few general observations 

 about the geographical features and the impression they 

 made upon me the first time I beheld them. For, I am sure 

 that some of my readers, still regarding Chad as a mythical 

 sort of region, will have pictured it in their minds, as I once 

 did, as a bright-blue inland sea, with fine, steep banks clothed 

 in luxuriant trees ; with islands of tropical palms reflected 

 in clear pools of amazing depth that in places glisten 

 bright under the hot, blue sky and in others are dark with 

 the shade of high, adjacent hills. Their imagination will 

 have painted smooth, shell-strewn shores that curve round 

 sheltered bays, into which open wide-mouthed rivers that 

 have wandered through the wilderness to this fair water 

 Canaan, forgetful of their fountains in far distant hills. 

 Here they have thought to find the grateful earth girdling 



