LAKE STORMS. 445 



so as to be ready at a moment's notice ; each man usually has his dagger 

 stuck in his belt, and on long trips, all are provided with bows and arrows. 

 These Africans cannot row. The paddle in the Tanganyika is a stout staff, 

 about sis feet long, and cut out at the top to admit a trefoil-sbaped block 

 the size of a man's hand. The block is adorned with black paint, in triangular 

 patches. It is tied to the staff by a bit of whipcord, and it seldom lasts a day 

 without breaking. The paddler, placing his hand on the top, and the other 

 about the middle of the staff, scoops up, as it were, the water in front of him, 

 steadying his paddle by drawing it along the side of the canoe. It is a labo- 

 rious occupation, and an excessive waste of power. 



" The Lake people derive their modern practice of navigation, doubtless, 

 from days of old ; the earliest accounts of the Portuguese mention the traffic 

 of this inland sea. They have three principal beats from Ujiji : the northern 

 abuts at the ivory and slave marts of Uvira ; the western conducts to the oppo- 

 site shores of the lake, and the island depots on the south-west; and the 

 southern leads to the land of Marungu. Their canoes creep along the shores 

 like the hollowed elder-trees of thirty bygone centuries, and, waiting till the 

 weather augurs fairly, they make a desperate push for the other side. Nothing 

 but their extreme timidity, except when emboldened by the prospect of a 

 speedy return home, preserves their cranky craft from constant accidents. The 

 Arabs, warned by the past, prefer the certain loss incurred, by deputing, for 

 trading purposes, agents and slaves, to personal risk. A storm upon the lake, 

 especially on one of the portentous evenings of the tropics, is indeed deeply 

 impressive. The wind is hushed, and the air feels sultry and stifling, while 

 low mutterings from the sable cloud-banks lying upon the horizon, cut by light 

 masses of mist in a long unbroken line, or from the black arch rising above the 

 Acroceraunian hills, at times disturb the death-like stillness. Presently, as 

 the shades deepen, a cold gust of wind — the invariable presage of a storm — 

 pours through the vast of night ; lightning flashes — at first by intervals, then 

 incessantly, with its accompaniment of reverberating thunder; now a loud 

 lumbering roll, like the booming of heavy batteries, then deepening into a 

 crash, which is followed after an interval by a rattling discharge, like the 

 sharp pattering of musketry. The waves begin to rise ; the rain — descending 

 at first by warning drops, presently in torrents — blinds the crew ; and if the 

 wind increases, there is little chance of the frail canoe living through the short 

 chopping sea. In addition to the dangers of the deep, the maritime tribes are, 

 or are supposed to be, ever planning ambuscades against the boats touching 

 at their land, and the sight of a few woolly heads in the bush causes the crew 

 to rise precipitately from food or sleep, to rush headlong to their canoes, with- 

 out caring what may be left behind, and to put out to sea beyond the reach 

 of a flight of arrows. 



" A voyage upon the Tanganyika begins with all the difficulties and delays 



