The grand problem now before me was how to steer clear of the Bukumu savages of the left bank, whose shouts and fierce yells came pealing to our ears, and were heard even above the roar and tremendous crash of the cataract. As I travelled round the island, many desperate ideas suggested themselves to me, and if I had been followed by a hundred practised and daring men it might have been possible to have dragged the canoes the length of the island past the first terrace of the cataract, and, after dashing across to Ntunduru Island, to have dragged them through its jungle and risked the falls by Asama Island; but there were not thirty men in the entire Expedition capable of listening to orders and implicitly obeying instructions. [Illustration: THE DESPERATE SITUATION OF ZAIDI, AND HIS RESCUE BY ULEDI, THE COXSWAIN OF THE BOAT.] To the east of Cheandoah the right branch was again forked by another island, and the whole face of the river was wild beyond description, and the din of its furious waves stunning; while the western branch, such was its force, went rushing down a terrace, and then swept round in an extensive whirlpool with a central depression quite eighteen inches below the outer rim. We pushed a rotten and condemned canoe above the fall, watched it shoot down like an arrow, and circle round that terrible whirling pool, and the next instant saw it drawn in by that dreadful suction, and presently ejected stern foremost 30 yards below. Close to the bank were nooks and basin-like formations in the trap rocks, in which every now and again the water became strongly agitated, and receding about twelve inches, would heave upwards with a rushing and gurgling that was awful.