OJJR STATION AT WAYO. 
295 
The agents received orders to expedite the march to Gondokoro^ 
and in seventeen days^ after experiencing the usual tardiness in 
procuring porters^ preparations were declared complete. 
Petherick in the meantime rapidly gained strength_, and daily 
went out shooting and fishing ; and in the Ayi^ another lovely river^ 
into which the Bibio flows at a point not more than a mile from 
our pretty station/he one day. killed five hippopotami. 
^^At the junction, the bed of the Bibio/^ to quote from my 
husband, is one hundred and twenty feet wide, and is confined 
between steep banks from ten to fifteen feet high. At this time 
(end of January) the flow of water in it was but trifling, and formed 
a little stream only eighteen feet wide, and from ankle to ten inches 
deep ; therefore the head of its waters could not be far distant. On 
the other hand, the Ayi was still a lovely river ; its rapid stream 
flowed over and between picturesque rocks and amongst the most 
charming of scenery. Those who know the best wooded portions 
of the Wye can form a good idea of what, with a richer vegetation, 
the Ayi appeared to us. We had followed it out of the chaos of 
reeds that vainly impeded the contributions of its waters to the 
White Nile near Fayak ; had crossed the lagoon at Hangau and 
Jemeed (of which it was the most important feeder), and again, 
when within its natural limits near Moraro, some forty-five miles 
north of this point Wayo, we had re-crossed to its eastern bank on 
our way hither, and had witnessed numerous of its tiny tributaries. 
As no description of the appearance of a stream will convey 
anything like the reality of the body of water conveyed down it, I 
made a careful measurement, and found that at that date of the 
dry season its volume of water was five hundred and sixty-four cubic 
feet per second. The entire width of its bed was three hundred 
and fifty-seven feet, ninety-one of it even now dry, and the water- 
