Landing At Eppigoya, We Were At Once Met By The Headman, And I Proposed That He Should Sell Us A Few Kids, As The Idea Of A Mutton Chop Was Most Appetizing.

Far from supplying us with this luxury, the natives immediately drove their flocks away, and after receiving a large present of beads, the headman brought us a present of a sick lamb almost at the point of natural death, and merely skin and bone.

Fortunately there were fowls in thousands, as the natives did not use them for food; these we purchased for one blue bead (monjoor) each, which in current value was equal to 250 fowls for a shilling. Eggs were brought in baskets containing several hundreds, but they were all poultry.

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 Vacovia the scenery increased in beauty. The lake had contracted to about thirty miles in width, and was decreasing rapidly northward; the trees upon the mountains upon the western shore could be distinguished. 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 Vacovia 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 been formed of decayed vegetation, from which the papyrus rushes took root; the thickness of the floating mass was about three feet, and so tough and firm that a man could walk upon it, merely sinking above his ankles in the soft ooze. Beneath this raft of vegetation was extremely deep water, and the shore for a width of about half a mile was entirely protected by this extraordinary formation.

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