At Length Canoes Were Reported
To Have Arrived, And I Was Requested To Inspect Them.
They were merely
single trees neatly hollowed out, but very inferior in size to the large
canoes on the Nile at M'rooli.
The largest boat was thirty-two feet
long, but I selected for ourselves one of twenty-six feet, but wider and
deeper.
Fortunately I had purchased at Khartoum an English screw auger 1 1/4
inch in diameter, and this tool I had brought with me, foreseeing some
difficulties in boating arrangements. I now bored holes two feet apart
in the gunwale of the canoe, and having prepared long elastic wands, I
spanned them in arches across the boat and lashed them to the auger
holes. This completed, I secured them by diagonal pieces, and concluded
by thatching the framework with a thin coating of reeds to protect us
from the sun; over the thatch I stretched ox-hides well drawn and
lashed, so as to render our roof waterproof. This arrangement formed a
tortoise-like protection that would be proof against sun and rain. I
then arranged some logs of exceedingly light wood along the bottom of
the canoe, and covered them with a thick bed of grass; this was covered
with an Abyssinian tanned ox-hide, and arranged with Scotch plaids. The
arrangements completed, afforded a cabin, perhaps not as luxurious as
those of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's vessels, but both rain-
and sun-proof, which was the great desideratum.
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