Every morning, as a rule, I made a short journey into the forest for the purpose of marking the position of any rubber vines or Hon-ton trees, so that when I was ready to use them there should be no delay. The vines were fairly abundant, and I found also several other rubber-bearing trees and creepers, so that I did not anticipate any difficulty in obtaining as much rubber as I should want; while as to the Hon-ton or bark trees, a couple would have been enough, and I had marked at least a dozen. From these expeditions I generally brought back a parrot or two, a hornbill, turakow, or other bird, and sometimes a small animal such as a squirrel or a pangolin, and one day I speared a porcupine. Monkeys I could have knocked down with my catapult by the dozen, but I had conscientious scruples (for blood is thicker than water), and avoided any nearer approach to cannibalism than the killing and eating of a potto. At the end of the week’s work the canoe had made considerable progress. The keel was laid, the stem and stern-posts shaped and strengthened with angle pieces, and the principal ribs or timbers of the midship portion fixed to the keel with tree-nails and strong lashings. The gunwales were also in position, the ends of the ribs joined by cross-bars or deck beams, and on either side of the main kelson (or inner keel) was another, rather lighter one at a distance of twelve inches, so that the floor of the boat would be very strong and rigid. Before the close of the second week the frame was finished, and very ship-shape it looked. I had at first had some misgivings as to the strength of a boat put together in this way, but I had none now, for although the separate timbers (excepting the kelson) were light and flexible, their number made the construction immensely strong. There were twenty-four ribs on each side, those of the midship portion being in one piece from gunwale to gunwale, and made of curved pieces of tough, springy liana; and the ends of all of them were joined by transverse bars or deck beams, excepting where the opening of the well would be. The ribs were fixed by eight stringers of hard wood on each side, in addition to the gunwales, running from stem to stern and fastened to the stem and stern posts. The fittings, too, were now nearly complete, for the long hours of darkness gave me plenty of time to work at them. The rudder (of the drop pattern like that of a lifeboat) was ready to fix on; four anchors, or rather grapnels, had been made from the hard stem of a bush which bore its branches in whorls of four, and now, with their shanks weighted with stones and their cables of liana secured, were ready for use. Two leeboards of framed sticks covered with bark, a seven foot mast, and the yard and boom were completed, and the fashioning of the paddle--the most arduous task of all--had been commenced. And besides all this, I had accumulated a quantity of liana cordage and a good length of rope made