"I found an English carpenter named Ferris, to whom I showed the boat and explained that the narrowness of the path would make her portage absolutely impossible, for since the path was often only eighteen inches wide in Africa, and hemmed in on each side with dense jungle, any package six feet broad could by no means be conveyed along it. It was therefore necessary that each of the four sections should be subdivided, by which means I should obtain eight portable sections, each three feet wide. Mr. Ferris, perfectly comprehending his instructions, and with the aid given by the young Pococks, furnished me within two weeks with the newly modelled _Lady Alice_. Meantime I was busy purchasing cloth, beads, wire, and other African goods, the most of them coming from the establishment of Tarya Topan, one of the millionaire merchants of Zanzibar. I made Tarya's acquaintance in 1871, and the righteous manner in which he then dealt by me caused me now to proceed to him again for the same purpose as formerly. "The total weight of goods, cloth, beads, wire, stores, medicine, bedding, clothes, tents, ammunition, boat, oars, rudders and thwarts, instruments and stationery, photographic apparatus, dry plates, and miscellaneous articles too numerous to mention, weighed a little over eighteen thousand pounds, or rather more than eight tons, divided as nearly as possible into loads weighing sixty pounds each, and requiring therefore the carrying capacity of three hundred men. The loads were made more than usually light, in order that we might travel with celerity, and not fatigue the people. "But still further to provide against sickness and weakness, a supernumerary force of forty men were recruited at Bagamoyo, Konduchi, and the Rufiji delta, who were required to assemble in the neighborhood of the first-mentioned place. Two hundred and thirty men, consisting of Wangwana, Wanyamwezi, and coast people from Mombasa, Tanga, and Saadani, affixed their marks opposite their names before the American consul, for wages varying from two to ten dollars per month and rations, according to their capacity, strength, and intelligence, with the understanding that they were to serve for two years, or until such time as their services should be no longer required in Africa, and were to perform their duties cheerfully and promptly.