The main stream, 900 yards wide, rushed towards the east-north-east, and, after a mile of rapids, tilted itself against a hilly ridge that lay north and south, the crest of which was probably 300 feet above the river. With my glass, from the fork of a tree twenty feet above the ground, I saw at once that a descent by the right side was an impossibility, as the waves were enormous, and the slope so great that the river’s face was all a foam; and that at the base of the hilly ridge which obstructed its course the river seemed piling itself into a watery bank, whence it escaped into a scene of indescribable confusion down to the horror of whirling pools, and a mad confluence of tumbling rushing waters. It was now quite easy to understand why our friends the Kankoré people, in attempting to illustrate the scene at the First Cataract, placed one hand overlapping the other—they meant to say that the water, driven with impetuosity against the hill, rose up and overlapped the constant flow from the steep slope. I decided, therefore, to go down along the left stream, overland, and to ascertain the best route, I took eight men with me, leaving five men to guard the boat. Within two hours we had explored the jungle, and “blazed” a path below the falls—a distance of two miles. Then returning to camp I sent Frank off with a detachment of fifty men with axes, to clear the path, and a musket-armed guard of fifteen men, to be stationed in the woods parallel with the projected land route, and, leaving a guard of twenty men to protect the camp, I myself rowed up river along the left bank, a distance of three miles. Within a bend, a mile above our camp, I discovered a small black-water river, about forty yards wide, issuing from the southwest, which I named Black River, from the colour of its water. Two miles above this, the affluent Lumami, which Livingstone calls “Young’s River,” entered the great stream, by a mouth 600 yards wide, between low banks densely covered with trees. At noon I took an observation of the sun—the declination of which being south gave me a clear water horizon—and ascertained it to be south latitude 0° 32′ 0″. _Jan. 7._—By noon of the 7th, having descended with the canoes as near as prudence would permit to the first fall of the left stream, we were ready for hauling the canoes overland. A road, fifteen feet in width, had been cut through the tangle of rattan, palms, vines, creepers and brushwood, tolerably straight except where great forest monarchs stood untouched, and whatever brushwood had been cut from the jungle had been laid across the road in thick piles. A rude camp had also been constructed half-way on the river side of the road, into which everything was conveyed. By 8 A.M. we had hauled the canoes over one mile of ground.