246 EASTERN ETHIOPIA xix 



A liii'ge island in the lake is inhabited. The people 

 who live on it cultivate the soil, and use canoes of 

 l^eculiar construction hut " as light as corks," Major 

 Powell-Cotton has carefully described these canoes : 

 they are built of the stems of the ambatch, a plant 

 which grows near the margin of the lake and attains a 

 height of fifteen feet : it has a fairly straight stem, the 

 bark is furnished with thorns, and its orange flowers are 

 like those of the bean. When dry, the stem being filled 

 with pith, it is extremely light. The ambatch grows 

 ra[)idly and as its roots merely dip into the water and 

 mud, large clusters of this plant are easily detached by 

 wind or Ijy current and form floating islands. 



The canoes on Lake Baringo are about 90 inches long 

 and thirty wide : the sides are seventeen inches deep, 

 and the bows higher and wider than the stern. The 

 ambatch stems are bound together with the inner bark 

 of the thorn tree, and the seams are caulked with drift 

 vegetable matter found near the margin of the lake. 

 They are propelled at the rate of three miles an hour by 

 means of two wooden paddles, and are built to hold two 

 men. These ambatch canoes remind one of the coracle 

 of the ancient Britons. (The coracle is used to-day by 

 the fishermen on the river Wye.) Rafts made of 

 ambatch stems are used liy the Shilluks on the upper 

 reaches of the White Nile ; the aml)atch plant flourishes 

 in, and is an important constituent of the sudd. 



Thomson expressed the opinion that the formation of 

 lake Baringo was due to a secondary subsidence in the 

 Rift Valley, and that the island was the upper part of 

 tlie cone of a volcano which had disappeared by sinking 

 below the level of the surrounding country, forming in 

 conseijuence a receptacle for the water of the lake. 

 This view has been confirmed. Major Powell-Cotton 

 (1902) foundtlieislandhad all the appearance of asunken 

 crater. It had an average diameter of a mile. At a 

 place called Lal)0urri, quite close to the edge of the lake, 

 there is a little Ijright green plot, some eighty yards 



