But he did not content himself for long with this idle observation. There was a method even in his fevered dreaming. He put the question: Did they get their stuff down to the Coast on the heads of carriers? The ghosts laughed at the idea of such a thing. "Why should we go against our nature? We Portuguese—in the days when we lived, who speak to you now—we were seamen and rivermen always. So we built great flat boats and swam our goods down the rivers."
"Christopher!" said the Englishman, "there's just the tip I've been waiting for. A sort of raft. By Gee! I'm going to shake hands with you for bringing the news."
But in that hospitable attempt he was stopped by the burly White-Man's-Trouble, who sat on his chest, till he promised to lie still again.
CHAPTER XVI
THE KING'S BOUNTY
A further brilliant idea came to Carter next morning that after all he and White-Man's-Trouble had been raising difficulties about the river's navigation that were quite unnecessary. There was a village of natives close at their door who were river-farers. What was more likely than that there were many men there who could pilot a canoe through a chain of creeks till at last they heard the great Atlantic surf roaring on a river bar?
White-Man's-Trouble shook his head when he heard the suggestion. "Dem bushmen savvy nothing," said he contemptuously.
Upon experiment it proved that he was right. The villagers had acquired the habit of fishing on the reaches which ran two miles up stream and two miles down; they had adopted the customs of their forefathers; no one of them had ever paddled beyond these limits. They were an incurious people.
Their canoes were small, and narrow, and unwieldy. They were dug out from cotton-wood trees with fire, and dubbed into vague shape with native adzes, and through sheer idleness and incapacity the builders had rarely selected straight timber. Even expert polers and paddlers could not propel those miserable craft in a straight course. One thing only were these fishers good at, and that was baling. But in this they had abundant practice, for all the canoes were sun-cracked, and leaked like baskets.
"I wish," said Carter, "for a great raft that will carry twelve tons of the shiny stones which fall from the mountain."