CHAPTER XXII

Summary

At seven o'clock we went down to the shore to embark. The boatmen whom the justice had consulted, and for whom he had been so tenacious, were his honour himself and another man, who, we thought, was hired as the cheapest help he could find in the village. The canoe was about forty feet long, with a toldo or awning of about twelve feet at the stern, and covered with matting. All the space before this was required by the boatmen to work the canoe, and, with all our luggage under the awning, we had but narrow quarters. The seeming lake on which we started was merely a large inundated plain, covered with water to the depth of three or four feet; and the justice in the stern, and his assistant before, walking in the bottom of the canoe, with poles against their shoulders, set her across. At eight o'clock we entered a narrow, muddy creek, not wider than a canal, but very deep, and with the current against us. The setting-pole could not touch bottom, but it was forked at one end, and, keeping close to the bank, the bogador or rower fixed it against the branches of overhanging trees and pushed, while the justice, whose pole had a rude hook, fastened it to other branches forward and pulled. In this way, with no view but that of the wooded banks, we worked slowly along the muddy stream.