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Bahr El Abiad.
First Voyage on the Nile--The Starting--Description of the River and the Country--Meet a Hostile Vessel--A Naval Engagement--Difficulties and Dangers--Judicial Procedure--Messages from the King of Uganda--His Efforts to get us back--Desertion--The Wanyoro Troops--Kamrasi--Elephant-Stalking--Diabolical Possessions.
In five boats of five planks each, tied together and caulked with mbugu rags, I started with twelve Wanguana, Kasoro and his page-followers, and a small crew, to reach Kamrasi's palace in Unyoro--goats, dogs, and kit, besides grain and dried meat, filling up the complement--but how many days it would take nobody knew.

Paddles propelled these vessels, but the lazy crew were slow in the use of them, indulging sometimes in racing spurts, then composedly resting on their paddles whilst the gentle current drifted us along.

The river, very unlike what it was from the Ripon Falls downward, bore at once the character of river and lake--clear in the centre, but fringed in most places with tall rush, above which the green banks sloped back like park lands.

It was all very pretty and very interesting, and would have continued so, had not Kasoro disgraced the Union Jack, turning it to piratical purposes in less than one hour.
A party of Wanyoro, in twelve or fifteen canoes, made of single tree trunks, had come up the river to trade with the Wasoga, and having stored their vessels with mbugu, dried fish, plantains cooked and raw, pombe, and other things, were taking their last meal on shore before they returned to their homes.