We now hired canoes for our whole party. We could only find three, though they were long and spacious: and I felt rather nervous. We had to stow in them all our baggage and just a hundred men. One canoe was about forty feet long and over three feet broad. It carried forty-three men. But we were tight-packed: and it required great care to change the rowers from time to time, while the canoes were still afloat. Our trip down the stream was delightful. We left the bank at ten o’clock, the men in high spirits at having nothing to carry. The river was about three hundred yards broad; and was shallow and full of islands. Three miles onward, the islands ceased and we had two long reaches to the north and west. The banks were fair and green: profusely covered with the bamboo cane, with its long lithe stalk and its white feathery flower. We soon began to see crocodiles; and were astonished at their numbers. They appeared in groups; they lay on the banks in the hot sun, lazy and asleep: and when awoke by the shouts of our men, quietly went and hid themselves beneath the water. There was one enormous creature, full twenty feet long, with a huge body and vast jaws. These reptiles were visible all the way down. After resting for tiffin at the village of Ambinány under a noble tamarind tree, we pitched our camp upon a broad bank of sand. There was abundance of drift wood lying about, and the men lit large fires and maintained them all night to keep the crocodiles away. The spot which we had reached was to us full of interest. Opposite to the camp was the BETSIBOKA river coming up from the south-east, and here the two rivers joined together. The Ikopa is a quarter of a mile broad: the Betsiboka is much broader and in the rainy season comes down in great flood, so as to throw the Ikopa waters far into the western bank and produce the broad sand on which we stood. High up in the moors of Imérina and among the roots of Angávokely, we had seen the fountains of numerous streams from which these rivers take their rise. At Ambatomena and Anjozorobe we had seen the Mananára, the Zábo, the Manánta: near Mantasóa we had seen the beginnings of the Ikopa and the Varáhina: at Andramásina and under Ankárat, the Sisaony, the Andromba, the Katsáoka and many more: all the waters of the Anátivolo, of Lohavohitra and North Vonizongo find their way hither; and now the united streams, keeping the name of the larger, the Betsiboka, will bear us to the sea.