352 
PROCURE SUPPLIES. 
[chap. XII. 
At Eppigoya the best salt was produced, and we 
purchased a good supply—also some dried fish : thus 
provisioned, we procured boatmen, and again started 
on our voyage. 
Hardly had we proceeded two hundred yards, when 
we were steered direct to the shore below the town, 
and our boatmen coolly laid down their paddles and 
told us that they had performed their share, and that 
as Eppigoya was divided into four parts under separate 
headmen, each portion would supply rowers ! 
Ridiculous as this appeared, there was no contesting 
their decision: and thus we were handed over from one 
to the other, and delayed for about three hours in 
changing boatmen four times within a distance of 
less than a mile ! The perfect absurdity of such a 
regulation, combined with the delay when time was 
most precious, was trying to the temper. At every 
change, the headman accompanied the boatmen to our 
canoe, and presented us with three fowls at parting; 
thus our canoes formed a floating poultry show, as we 
had already purchased large supplies. Our live stock 
bothered us dreadfully: being without baskets, the 
fowls were determined upon suicide, and many jumped 
deliberately overboard, while others that were tied by 
the legs were drowned in the bottom of the leaky 
canoe. 
After the tenth day from our departure from Yacovia 
the scenery increased in beauty. The lake had con¬ 
tracted to about thirty miles in width, and was 
decreasing rapidly northward; the trees upon the 
mountains upon the western shore could be distin¬ 
guished. Continuing our voyage north, the western 
shore projected suddenly, and diminished the width of 
the lake to about twenty miles. It was no longer the 
great inland sea that at Yacovia had so impressed me, 
with the clean pebbly beach that had hitherto formed 
the shore, but vast banks of reeds growing upon floating 
vegetation prevented the canoes from landing. These 
banks were most peculiar, as they appeared to have 
