Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/420

 If any one can suggest a better I shall be only too delighted, for it was laborious work, and these choice spots are anything but uncommon in West African rivers. Then I remember another steam lanch—the Dragon Fly. She had been built for coal, but there was no coal, so she had to burn wood. Wood, as my nautical friends would say, blows a ship out, and to store enough wood to go twenty miles you had to have wood billets everywhere; all over the deck, and on top of the sun-deck, &c., to such an extent that there was no room for you, and the gunwale was nearly awash. Then you always got on a sandbank, several sandbanks, so the wood got burnt right up before you got anywhere you wanted to, and you had to return by the current and the help of poles. If I had been bound to go on in her, we must have spent the greater part of our lives wood-chopping in wet forests; but I am of too nervous a disposition to penetrate the interior on the Dragon Fly with her dilapidated boiler.

Then there was a patent launch that progressed theoretically by the explosion of small quantities of gunpowder; but the trade powder we had did not suit her somehow, so she pursued a policy of masterly inactivity, making awesome noises in her works, and the quickest trip she ever did was to the bottom. And she certainly did make that on trade powder. I own I am prejudiced against launches. The heat of the West Coast climate is quite enough for me without having a large hot water bottle, in the shape of a boiler, to sit by. And a canoe is a craft you can take almost anywhere, and is therefore better for general work, unless you have a good deep channel large enough for you to have a steamer of a respectable size.

In addition to grass creeks and sandbanks, the obstacles to the navigation of side streams, on the Ogowé and its neighbouring rivers are swamps of papyrus, exceedingly lovely, but difficult to get through, and great floating masses of river lettuce (Pistia stratiotes). It is very like a nicely grown cabbage lettuce, and it is very charming when you look down a creek full of it, for the beautiful tender green makes a perfect picture against the dark forest that rises from the banks of the creek. If you are in a canoe, it gives you little