WE TRY A CANOE 
135 
I have never heard of any permanent ill effects resulting from 
this over-stuffing. Any traveller in Africa will corroborate this 
account, and also will bear witness to the fact that after such 
a feed the boys will travel hard for a couple of days or more 
without further food, and not complain of hunger. With them 
it is either a feast or a famine—usually more famine than feast, 
I am afraid—and accordingly they make up for lost time when 
the opportunity occurs. 
While all this was going on, Hammar and I, influenced by 
the prevailing holiday spirit, got into a dug-out canoe on an 
open space in the river, to test its qualities as a navigating 
vehicle and our own qualifications as paddlers. Amid the 
united shouts of laughter from all the boys, who came to 
witness the attempt, we hesitatingly steered our course into 
deep water, sitting flat on the bottom board, in about two inches 
of dirty water, to keep the centre of gravity down, otherwise 
we should inevitably have turned the rickety affair over. 
Badly balanced, with the head low down in the water, it was 
a most difficult task to control our craft, which, influenced by 
the one and a half knot current of the Chobe, led us into all 
sorts of awkward situations, the more so as any attempt at 
quick or powerful movements set the canoe rocking so that we 
shipped water on both sides, to the further detriment of our 
nether garments. Hammar at the head, and 1 at the stern, 
kept shouting orders to each other, which neither the one nor 
the other was capable of executing, as we sat grinning in the 
most ghastly manner to make the boys believe we were quite 
at home and enjoying our trip in this rickety old catamaran. 
Now we paddled on one side and then on the other, falsely 
pretending to a dexterity in manipulating the paddle which 
neither of us possessed—for it was all a miserable sham, and 
at last, fairly beaten in our attempts to head round, we had to 
travel ignominiously backwards to the land, with an uncom¬ 
fortable caution that only found relief when we finally bumped 
against the shore, and landed dripping wet from the quantity 
of water we had shipped. An outrigger supporting such a 
