DIFFICULT RAPIDS 241 



to run like a mill-race, and we heard the roar of 

 rapids ahead. We pulled to the right bank, moored 

 the canoes, and while most of the men pitched camp 

 two or three of them accompanied us to examine the 

 rapids. We had made twenty kilometres. 



We soon found that the rapids were a serious obstacle. 

 There were many curls, and one or two regular falls, 

 perhaps six feet high. It would have been impossible 

 to run themj and they stretched for nearly a mile. The 

 carry, however, which led through woods and over rocks 

 in a nearly straight line, was somewhat shorter. It was 

 not an easy portage over which to carry heavy loads 

 and drag heavy dugout canoes. At the point where the 

 descent was steepest there were great naked flats of 

 friable sandstone and conglomerate. Over parts of these, 

 where there was a surface of fine sand, there was a growth 

 of coarse grass. Other parts were bare and had been 

 worn by the weather into fantastic shapes — one projec- 

 tion looked like an old-fashioned beaver hat upside down. 

 In this place, where the naked flats of rock showed the 

 projection of the ledge through which the river had cut 

 its course, the torrent rushed down a deep, sheer-sided, 

 and extremely narrow channel. At one point it was 

 less than two yards across, and for some distance not 

 more than five or six yards. Yet only a mile or two 

 above the rapids the deep, placid river was at least a 

 hundred yards wide. It seemed extraordinary, almost 

 impossible, that so broad a river could in so short a 

 space of time contract its dimensions to the width of the 

 strangled channel through which it now poured its 

 entire volume. 



This had for long been a station where the Nhambi- 

 quaras at intervals built their ephemeral villages and 

 tUled the soil with the rude and destructive cultivation 



16 



