"Shall I permit myself, while looking from Ujiji over the waters of the Tanganika Lake to the other side, to be balked on the threshold of success by the insolence of a King Kannena or the caprice of a Hamed bin Sulayyam?" was a question I asked myself. To guard against such a contingency I determined to carry my own boats. "Then," I thought, "if I hear of Livingstone being on the Tanganika, I can launch my boat and proceed after him." I procured one large boat, capable of carrying twenty persons, with stores and goods sufficient for a cruise, from the American Consul, for the sum of $80, and a smaller one from another American gentleman for $40. The latter would hold comfortably six men, with suitable stores. I did not intend to carry the boats whole or bodily, but to strip them of their boards, and carry the timbers and thwarts only. As a substitute for the boards, I proposed to cover each boat with a double canvas skin well tarred. The work of stripping them and taking them to pieces fell to me. This little job occupied me five days. I also packed them up, for the pagazis. Each load was carefully weighed, and none exceeded 68 lbs. in weight. John Shaw excelled himself in the workmanship displayed on the canvas boats; when finished, they fitted their frames admirably. The canvas--six bolts of English hemp, No. 3--was procured from Ludha Damji, who furnished it from the Sultan's storeroom. An insuperable obstacle to rapid transit in Africa is the want of carriers, and as speed was the main object of the Expedition under my command, my duty was to lessen this difficulty as much as possible. My carriers could only be engaged after arriving at Bagamoyo, on the mainland. I had over twenty good donkeys ready, and I thought a cart adapted for the footpaths of Africa might prove an advantage. Accordingly I had a cart constructed, eighteen inches wide and five feet long, supplied with two fore-wheels of a light American wagon, more for the purpose of conveying the narrow ammunition-boxes. I estimated that if a donkey could carry to Unyanyembe a load of four frasilahs, or 140 lbs., he ought to be able to draw eight frasilahs on such a cart, which would be equal to the carrying capacity of four stout pagazis or carriers. Events will prove, how my theories were borne out by practice. When my purchases were completed, and I beheld them piled up, tier after tier, row upon row, here a mass of cooking-utensils, there bundles of rope, tents, saddles, a pile of portmanteaus and boxes, containing every imaginable thing, I confess I was rather abashed at my own temerity. Here were at least six tons of material! "How will it ever be possible," I thought, "to move all this inert mass across the wilderness stretching between the sea, and the great lakes of Africa? Bah, cast all doubts away, man, and have at them! 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,' without borrowing from the morrow."