Next morning two white men, owning that they felt 'awful mean,' left Granton, walked down to Riverside House, and at 8 A.M. embarked upon the hapless _Effuenta_. The stream rapidly narrowed, and its aspect became wilder. Dead trees, anchored by the bole-base, cumbered the bed, and dykes and bars of slate, overlaid by shales of recent date, projected from either side. The land showed no sign of hills, but the banks were steep at this season, in places here and there based on ruddy sand and exposing strips of rude conglomerate, the _cascalho_ of the Brazil. This pudding is composed of waterworn pebbles, bedded in a dark clayey soil which crumbles under the touch. On an arenaceous strip projecting from the western edge the women were washing and panning where the bottom of the digging was below that of the river. This is an everyday sight on the Ancobra, and it shows what scientific 'hydraulicking' will do. After six hours of steaming, not including three to fill the boiler, we halted at Enframadie, the Fanti Frammanji, meaning 'wind cools,' that is, falls calm. It is a wretched split heap of huts on the left bank, one patch higher pitched than the other, to avoid the floods; the tenements are mere cages, the bush lying close to the walls, and supplies are unprocurable. In fact, the further we go the worse we fare as regards mere lodgings; yet the site of our present halt is a high bank of yellow clay, which suggests better things. There is no reason why this miserable hole should not be made the river-depot. On March 4 we set out in the 'lizard's sun,' as the people call the morning rays; our vehicle was the surf-boat, escorted by the big canoe. Enframadie is the terminus of launch-navigation; the snags in the Dries stop the way, and she cannot stem the current of the Rains. The Ancobra now resembles the St. John's or Prince's River in the matter of timber-floorwork and _chevaux de frise_ of tree-corpses disposed in every possible direction. After half an hour we paddled past the 'Devil's Gate,' a modern name for an old and ugly feature. H.S.M.'s entrance (to home?) is formed by black reefs and ridges projected gridiron-fashion from ledges on either side almost across the stream, leaving a narrow _Thalweg_ so shallow that the boatmen must walk and drag. During the height of the floods it is sometimes covered for a few hours by forty feet of water, rising and falling with perilous continuity.