eir state of weakness, had not
sufficient strength to hold the canoe, and the moment she entered the
swift current she escaped, dragging one man into the rapid. I jumped into
the water after him, and just managed to grab him before he was swept
away altogether in the terrific current. We were all drenched, and as the
wind blew with great violence that day, and there was no sun to warm us
up, we felt the cold very much.

The canoe was thrown mercilessly now against one rock, then against
another; but, as luck would have it, after she had made several
pirouettes, we, running all the time with our bleeding feet on the sharp
rocks along the bank, were eventually able to recapture her at the end of
the rapid. Then came the job of going back to fetch all the baggage and
bring it down, baling the water out of the canoe, and starting off once
more.

My men were tired; they said they could stand the work no more, and they
wanted to remain there and die. It took much persuasion to make them come
on. I succeeded principally by giving them a good example, carrying down
most of the loads that day myself from the upper end of the rapid to the
lower--a distance of several hundred metres. I was getting tired, too, of
carrying the heavy loads, but I never let my men see it; that would have
been fatal.

The river was divided into two channels by a group of islands which must
at one time have been one great triangular one, subsequently worn by
parallel and transverse channels into seven islands. The first, most
southerly, was 300 m. broad, 150 m. long, and of a triangular shape. The
three immediately behind this, and of irregular shapes, had an average
length of some 700 m.; whereas the last group of three, all of elongated
shapes, had a length of 300 m. each. I was getting to the end of the list
of names for all those islands, and I was at a loss to find seven names
all of a sudden, so I called the group the Seven Sisters Islands. At the
end of the group the river narrowed to 400 m. in width between a long
island to the west and the right bank, and flowed due north for 12,000 m.
in a direct line--indeed a most beautiful sight. Fifteen hundred metres
down that distance a great barrier of columnar or cylindrical rocks stuck
out of the water from W.S.W. to E.N.E. North of those rocks on the left
side, upon the island, not less than 5,000 m. long--Lunghissima
Island--was a beautiful yellow sand beach 200 m. long, which formed a
separate i