THE RAFTS. THE VOYAGE 103 
together, so that the raft is from 25 to 30 feet broad, 
and about 130 feet long, and its weight may be as much 
as 200 tons. Long planks are also bound upon it on a 
regular plan, and these give it the necessary strength 
and firmness. Next huts of bamboo and raffia 
leaves are built upon it, and a special platform of logs 
is coated with clay to serve as a fireplace for cooking. 
Powerful steering-oars are fixed in front and behind in 
strong forks, so that the course of the raft can be to 
some extent guided, and as each of these needs at least 
six men to work it, there must be a crew of between 
fifteen and twenty men. Then when all the bananas 
and manioc sticks that can be procured have been 
placed upon it, the voyage begins. 
The crew must know well the whereabouts of the 
continually shifting sandbanks, in order to avoid them, 
and these, covered as they are with brown water, are 
very hard to detect at any considerable distance. If 
the raft strikes one, there is no way of getting it afloat 
again but by releasing from it one by one the logs 
which have got fixed in the sand, and putting them 
back again afterwards. Sometimes the raft has to be 
taken entirely to pieces and re-made, a proceeding 
which under those conditions takes a week and involves 
the loss of a certain number of the logs, which the 
stream carries away during the work. Time, too, is 
precious, for provisions are usually not too abundant, 
and the further they get down the Ogowe, the harder it 
is to get more. For a few wretched bananas the people 
of the villages on the lower Ogowe exact from the 
hungry raftsmen a franc, or a franc and a half ; or they 
may refuse to supply anything at all. 
It happens not infrequently during the voyage that 
