Pokonio Folklore. 463
Tana has had a wider outlet to the sea and its two annual inundations cover less ground than formerly,^ — is more and more giving place to maize. They are ex[)ert canocmen, manipulating their dug-outs {^vaho,•^\\xx^\ niaJio) with great skill, by means of short, leaf-shaped paddles and forked punting-poles, and pass a great deal of their time on the river. Sometimes one sees a luaho with the husband punt- ing at the bow and the wife paddling at the stern, or vice versd, and a baby and a pile of baskets amidships. Both men and women are good swimmers, using the hand-over- hand stroke like, I believe, all Africans. The Tana is infested by crocodiles, though the numbers are kept down by the popularity of the reptile as an article of food. The natives seem singularly fearless as regards crocodiles. " Why, we eat each other ! " they sometimes say, — a la guerre comme a la guerre. A Pokomo once said to me that the Swahili are sometimes caught by crocodiles " because they are afraid of them. But we, — we simply don't pay any attention to them. We know they are there in the water, like the fish, but we never trouble our heads about them." Accidents, however, sometimes happen. A woman is occa- sionally seized and dragged in when incautiously filling her water jar at the river's edge, instead of dipping it from the higher bank with the long-handled gourd in general use.
Fishing is done either with rod and line or with miono (plural of mono), baskets like magnified lobster-pots, about five feet long by two wide. During flood-time, i.e. generally in November or December, and again in April or May, fishing is carried on in the Tana itself, but, when the water
- The Tana formerly reached the sea through a channel still traceable near
Chara and containing water in places, known to the Swahili as Mto Tana. The Tana and the Ozi, (a small river with a large estuary somewhat to the north- east), were long ago connected by the so-called " Belezoni Canal," probably the work of the Arabs, but scarcely more than a ditch. Mr. Anderssen, Com- missioner of Tanaland in 1902, had the Belezoni cleared out and widened, and since then the volume of water entering the sea by way of the Ozi is so great as to lower the level of the river at flood -time.
