The bargaining for permission to cross required both time and patience; and when it was all concluded I thought that certainly we should find some decent sort of craft provided to transport us and our belongings to the farther bank. It was about an hour after sunrise when we arrived at the banks of the river, which were covered with dense masses of canes, and not a sign was there of the men or the canoes which had been promised and paid for. We waited while Hatibu sent messengers to press the chief to hurry his men, and sat waiting patiently for them to return on a small rise just outside the cane-swamp. Presently we saw one or two heads of men gliding down through the canes, and Hatibu shouted, “Pack up, pack up! see the canoes.”
All hands answered to his shout, and seizing their loads forced their way through the canes and mud to the edge of the river. There we found two things which might be called canoes, but were simply strips of bark eighteen or twenty feet long, with the ends pinched and sewn together, so that they formed troughs some fifteen inches wide and twelve deep. In one end (bow or stern one could not name it) stood a black fellow, who propelled his crazy craft with a long pole, punting in the shallows and paddling when he could not reach the bottom. In all my experiences I had never seen such frail and rickety craft as those now provided, and I wondered how we should get across without disaster, more especially as I was told that the river swarmed with crocodiles, and if one was capsized the chances were two to one in favour of being seized and carried off by these monsters.
A man with his load, and the ferryman, loaded the frail craft far beyond the Board of Trade regulations. I watched with anxiety the passage of some twenty men and their loads. Seeing no disaster, I summoned up courage and stepped carefully and gingerly into one; then kneeling down and leaning forward I held on to the sticks which formed an apology for a gunwale, and gave the word to shove off. The water washed against my knuckles, and even trickled over the side, and I thought nothing could have saved me from an upset; but my dusky Charon was as deft in managing the balance of his swaying vessel as a rope-dancer, and I arrived at the farther bank, thankful to be across the Malagarazi safe and sound.