194 
THE RIVER KITANGULE. 
the project was given up, and we commenced the pas- 
sage of the river at a reach four hundred yards long, 
having paid beforehand twenty strings of beads for 
my men, and an extra handful of cowries were given 
by the Waganda to the ferrymen. Poling for twenty 
yards through a winding channel cleared of the tall 
papyrus, and not broader than our canoe, we reached 
the stream, fully eighty yards across, judged to be 
five to six fathoms deep, looking as if any man-of-war 
could sail up, and flowing majestically at the rate of 
about three miles an hour. The strength of the cur- 
rent was so great that we had to pole up its right 
bank inside the fringe of papyrus for thirty yards, 
and then the two ferrymen, with a paddle each, made 
the canoe glide across diagonally down to the opposite 
channel in the reeds, which they reached with great 
precision. Poling for fifty to eighty yards was now 
adopted, landing upon mire which nearly sucked us 
into its hold ; beyond this, the old line of the river 
rose abruptly like a railway embankment. At that 
level the country extended far away in a pleasant 
grassy plain, giving it the appearance of an Indian 
parade-ground ; but the footing was treacherous, being 
full of ant-holes, and dotted with cactus-trees, white- 
ant mounds, with their usual vegetation, thistle-looking 
plants, and a scarlet-flowering shrub. In the distance 
to the north were rocky hills. 
We observed that the waters of the Kitangule 
are accumulated from the lakes Karague, Kagsera, 
Kishakka, Ooyewgomah, and water from Utumbi. 
This river is, beyond comparison, the greatest body of 
water met with from the south of the Victoria Nyanza 
all round its western shore to its most northerly point, 
