"To us, then, these untenanted islets, with their 'breadths of tropic shade, and palms in clusters,' seemed verily 'knots of paradise.' Like hunted beasts of the chase, we sought the gloom and solitudes of the wilds. Along the meandering and embowered creeks, hugging the shadows of the o'erarching woods, we sought for that safety which man refused us.
"The great river grew sealike in breadth below Irebu on the morning of the 24th; indeed, it might have been one hundred miles in breadth for aught we knew, deep-buried as we were among the islands. Yet there were broad and deep channels on every side of us, as well as narrow creeks between lengthy islands. The volume of water appeared exhaustless, though distributed over such an enormous width. There was water sufficient to float the most powerful steamers that float in the Mississippi. Here and there among the verdured isles gleamed broad humps of white sand, but on either side were streams several hundred yards wide, with as much as three fathoms' depth of water in the channels.
"At noon we reached south latitude 1° 37' 22". The Mompurengi natives appeared on an island and expressed their feelings by discharging two guns at us, which we did not resent, but steadily held on our way. An hour afterwards faithful Amina, wife of Kachéché, breathed her last, making a most affecting end.
"Being told by Kachéché that his poor wife was dying, I drew my boat alongside of the canoe she was lying in. She was quite sensible, but very weak. 'Ah, master,' she said, 'I shall never see the sea again. Your child Amina is dying. I have so wished to see the cocoanuts and the mangoes; but no; Amina is dying--dying in a pagan land. She will never see Zanzibar. The master has been good to his children, and Amina remembers it. It is a bad world, master, and you have lost your way in it. Good-bye, master; do not forget poor little Amina!'
"While floating down we dressed Amina in her shroud, and laid her tenderly out, and at sunset consigned her body to the depths of the silent river.
"The morning of the 25th saw us once again on the broad stream floating down. We got a view of the mainland to the right, and discovered it to be very low. We hurried away into the island creeks, and floated down among many reedy, grassy islets, the haunt of bold hippopotami, one of which made a rush at a canoe with open mouth, but contented himself fortunately with a paddle, which he crunched into splinters.